Web Excursions 2022-01-16
Introduction to U.S. Economy: GDP and Economic Growth
Economic activity includes any actions involved in the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economists generally view economic activity as a circular flow of resources.
Income that households choose to save remains in the circular flow of resources;
it is distributed to businesses through the financial sector in the form of loans
rather than through consumption spending.
Measurements of GDP
GDP is defined as the total value of all final goods, services, and structures produced by a nation’s economy during a specified period—in other words, the total value of the economy’s output.
expenditure approach: the output gap—the difference between real GDP and potential GDP.
income approach
Measurements of GDP produced through the expenditure approach and income approach are equivalent
because the final market price of a good or service should reflect all of the incomes earned and costs incurred throughout the production process.
Potential GDP and economic perf
actual output is above its potential - the economy is overheating (expanding at an unsustainable rate).
actual output is below its potential - less-than-full employment and potential recessionary conditions.
Policymakers can use monetary and fiscal policies to affect aggregate demand (i.e., total spending)
in an effort to diminish the volatility of the business cycle.
To affect the economy’s long-term growth rate, it is important to focus on the supply side of the economy instead of factors that impact demand within the economy.
The stock of physical capital in an economy is largely dependent on the rate of investment in the economy.
Policymakers generally use growth in real GDP—
the total value of economic output adjusted for inflation—
to understand changes in economic output over time.
For comparisons over time or across countries, real GDP per capita is often an improved measure of economic growth because it accounts for differences in population.
在上海,要寻找一家报刊亭并不容易。
在故乡,报刊亭分布于学校附近,它是小镇青年看世界的一扇窗口,是我们获取新闻资讯和作文素材的重要参考,放学后去报刊亭,成了跟去足球场一样的生活习惯。
据《第一财经周刊》的记者调查,上海曾经有 3000 多家报刊亭,2019 年却只剩下 200 多个,疫情发生后,上海报刊亭的数量继续减少,如今恐怕只有几十家还存在。
新中国报刊亭的快速增长和衰弱,则发生在 21 世纪的头二十年。
2000 年,中央文明办、建设部、公安部等部门为了缓解下岗潮引起的社会动荡,运用多种手段安置就业人口,其中就包括要求各大中小城市建立书报亭。
九十年代末,上海推出了一个“4050 工程”,旨在帮助下岗员工再就业
因为在下岗的人群里,大部分女性在 40 岁左右,男性在 50 岁左右。对于上海市政府来说,报刊亭在那个阶段的功能就是用于安置失业人口。
2002 年,500 名失业者成为天津日报新报亭的亭主,实际参与经营的失业者达 1000 多人。
同年 6 月,安徽日报报业集团筹建了全省报刊零售网络项目,计划用 4 年时间,建设 5000 多个连锁经营的徽风报刊亭,也是用来安置下岗人员。
当时,宣传下岗人员报刊亭再就业,也成为地方政府表现自己“体察民情”的方式。
比如《安徽日报》2002 年就有一则报道,题目就是《“连心亭”温暖下岗人》,报道以前合肥皖安机械厂徽风报刊亭亭长李艳秋作为典型,
丈夫生病后,她需要承担每月做透析和用药的高额费用,生活窘迫到只能靠亲朋好友接济,
安徽大规模建设报刊亭后,她取得了一家报刊亭的加盟经营权,加上政府补助,生活才算有了起色。
但是在 2008 年以后,东方书报公司走向衰落,旗下报刊亭也没能尽早转型,一座座东方书报亭被拆除的背后,是全国纸质媒体的转型和报刊亭的削减。
到了 2018 年,上海的大部分报刊亭已经非倒即拆。
2018 年 4 月 15 日,最后一家东方书报亭在淮海路被拆除。
决定报刊亭命运的因素有很多,纸媒是一个重要变量,可它还关乎一座城市的文化素养、公共讨论环境、媒介多元化程度、政府对报刊亭扶持力度、报刊亭的选址与店面等种种变量。
报刊亭不只是窗口,它曾经也是社区和学校里的一个小型公共空间——促进人与人交往的线下渠道。
2021 年 7 月,上海一个中学生写信给《中国青年报》,呼吁恢复报刊亭
在这封信里,这位初中生不但说到报刊亭的消亡,也说到报刊亭对于学生和社区老人的重要性
there’s a delightful irony in the name Metal.
Back in the day when it was common to resort to very low-level programming of hardware to achieve good performance, that was referred to as hitting the metal.
The one thing that Metal does is to ensure that today’s developers don’t have to hit the metal any more.
In fact, far more Asian workers moved to the Americas in the 19th century to make sugar than to build the transcontinental railroad.
thousands of Chinese migrants were recruited to work side by side with African Americans on Louisiana’s sugar plantations after the Civil War.
Recruited and reviled as “coolies,” their presence in sugar production helped justify racial exclusion after the abolition of slavery.
In response to a series of slave rebellions in its own sugar colonies, especially in Jamaica, the British Empire formally abolished slavery in the 1830s.
British emancipation included a payment of £20 million to slave owners
Importing indentured labor from Asia emerged as a potential way to maintain the British Empire’s sugar plantation system.
The experiment with “Gladstone coolies,” as those workers came to be known, inaugurated what historian Hugh Tinker called “a new system of slavery,” which would endure for nearly a century.
Desperate to regain power and authority after the war, Louisiana’s wealthiest planters studied and learned from their Caribbean counterparts.
They, too, looked to Asian workers for their salvation,
fantasizing that so-called “coolies” would be cheap, industrious and submissive – a “model minority” of sorts.
To great fanfare, Louisiana’s wealthiest planters spent thousands of dollars to recruit gangs of Chinese workers.
When 140 Chinese laborers arrived on Millaudon plantation near New Orleans on July 4, 1870, at a cost of about $10,000 in recruitment fees,
the New Orleans Times reported that they were “young, athletic, intelligent, sober and cleanly”
and superior to “the vast majority of our African population.”
Mostly segregated in specifically designated buildings in former slave quarters, Chinese workers generally contracted to work for wage rates far below the prevailing rate in the sugar region:
around $14 per month, compared with about $20 per month that local Black men received.
But the competition between Black and Chinese laborers that planters predicted did not materialize.
On the ground, Chinese workers behaved no differently from Black workers.
When they heard that other workers earned more, they demanded the same.
When planters refused, they ran away.