Economics on a Global Scale
(excerpts and compilations from the news about international economic activities)
2. Value for the money spent or a favorable cost-to-benefit ratio: It does matter what gets built: the country spent too much on increasingly wasteful roads and bridges, and not enough in areas like education and social services, which studies show deliver more bangs for the bucks than infrastructure spending.
2. To condemned openly: The ordinary Japanese widely disparage spending that has turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state by making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs.
2. A recession or a slowing of the rate of economic growth that comes close to being a recession. China is already two months into its own, very different stimulus effort to combat the global economic slump.
2. Large-scale public systems like power, water supply, roads, public transportation, etc: While economists may debate the details, the combined national, provincial, and local spending for economic stimulus promises to change the face of China, giving the country a world-class infrastructure to move goods and people quickly, affordably, and reliably across great distances.
As President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress draft an economic stimulus plan for the United States, China is already two months into its own, very different stimulus effort to combat the global economic slump.
Economic prescription in China consists primarily of roads and rails
Fear of protests by idle workers spurs vast spending on infrastructure projects in China
As President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress draft an economic stimulus plan for the United States, China is already two months into its own, very different stimulus effort to combat the global economic slump.
China is taking a more old-fashioned approach to stimulating an economy, with a heavy emphasis on pouring concrete and laying rails for high-speed trains.
China's approach is to spend a lot of money quickly and to create jobs for literally millions of workers.
Spending on the construction of intercity rail lines, the highest priority in the stimulus plan, is to double this year to eighty-eight billion dollars. While economists may debate the details, the combined national, provincial, and local spending for economic stimulus promises to change the face of China, giving the country a world-class infrastructure to move goods and people quickly, affordably, and reliably across great distances.
The goal is to slow China's dependence on personal cars and imported oil, to reduce air pollution and to relieve the annual shortage of seats on trains during the Lunar New Year, when millions of people visit their families.
Chinese authorities have disclosed that there were 110,000 workers laboring to complete a high-speed rail route from Beijing to Shanghai indicating that infrastructure construction in China remains a labor-intensive activity that has created many jobs.
China has already built as many miles of high-speed passenger rail lines in the past four years as Europe has in two decades.
Besides transportation, most of the rest of China's national stimulus program will be spent on airports, highways, and environmental projects, particularly water treatment plants.
Tokyo's wasted trillions buy a costly lesson
Concrete couldn't solve crisis in Japan and can it do any better with the crisis in the U.S.?
The Hamada (Japan) Marine Bridge soars majestically over this small fishing harbor, so much larger than the squid boats anchored below that it seems out of place.
It is not just the bridge. Two decades of generous pubic works spending have showered this city of 61,000 mostly graying residents with a highway, a four-lane bypass, a university, a prison, a children's art museum, the Sun Village Hamada sports center, a bright red welcome center, a ski resort, and an aquarium featuring three ring-blowing beluga whales.
This remote port in western Japan's rural areas which have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams, and other big infrastructure projects, is not the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s.
During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world; totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy, while failing to generate a convincing recovery.
Now, as the Obama administration embarks on a similar path, proposing to spend more than $820 billion to stimulate the sagging American economy, many economists are taking a fresh look at Japan's troubled experience.
It does matter what gets built: Japan spent too much on increasingly wasteful roads and bridges, and not enough in areas like education and social services, which studies show deliver more bang for the buck than infrastructure spending.
Among ordinary Japanese, the spending is widely disparaged for having turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state by making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs.
While infrastructure spending may yield strong results for developing nations, creating jobs in higher-paying knowledge-based services like health care and education can bring larger benefits to advanced economies like Japan, with its aging population.