World Input Output Database (WIOD)

A new database is available, which should be helpful in understanding economic linkages across countries  – see here.

4 replies on “World Input Output Database (WIOD)”

Looks like a great project in the making:

Re “Economic growth and intensified trade seem to be coupled to an increasing inequality between countries as well as between various classes within society. ”

Not only between but ‘within’ countries, over the past 3 decades since financialisation and globalisation of markets began in 1970’s, especially the US, its 1% now owning 40%

Here’s some US research:

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/top-5-facts-america-richest-1-183022655.html

#1) The Top 1% Owns 40% of the Nation’s Wealth:
#2) The Top 1% Take Home 24% of National Income:
#3) The Top 1% Own Half of the Country’s Stocks, Bonds and Mutual Funds:
#4) The Top 1% of Americans Have Only 5% of the Nation’s Personal Debt:
#5) The Top 1% Are Taking In More off the Nation’s Income Than at Any Other Time Since the 1920s:

Above conditions similar to those that last occurred pre 1929

Tax em and unionise.

Europe’s greatest loss of wealth occurred in the early 80s when a decision was made to stop or slow down dramatically Nuclear fission plant construction.
Subsequently there was a dash for Gas that filled this investment / energy hole which appeared more profitable as much less upfront capital costs was needed.
The new apparent surplus capital was subsequently expended on credit Grot via the now higher productivity western workers who were given credit rather then increased wages to sustain demand creating this new global arbitrage system.

The holistic opportunity cost of burning such a valuable high quality fuel for mundane electricity use was and is dramatic.
This can best be seen in the British & Italian energy use for electricity graphs…. especially post 1990.

http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/GBELEC.pdf

http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/ITELEC.pdf

All of this is wrapped up with the European banks financing of coal fired plants in China thus destroying western nuclear capital & expertise over time.
(The UK is now unable to build even a single fission plant while even France struggles to build 1 a decade on its home soil….. when once it was building 2+ a year….. meanwhile its plants are rapidly ageing)

A classic slave arbitrage system was created with Gas / credit consumption increasing the ratio of western Grot consumption with Asian coal depletion churning out the Grot.

However – This globalised Gas / Coal dynamic begins to break down in a world of $100 oil as cheap oil is needed to keep this absurd supply chain functioning.
The writing was on the wall many years ago when shipping companies retired relatively well paid maratime jobs to keep the dying system appearing efficient when it was not….. this was merely a rearranging of costs and inputs … reducing labour inputs to sustain a unsustainable system as we have come to expect as normal practise under the Ryanair model of “growth” etc etc.

@Colm Brazel

“Here’s some US research… the top 1%…”

A quick way of joining the top 1% sounds like writing one of those self-help books for the 99% (“Think And Become A Top 1%’er”, “How To Access The Inner 1%’er In You” etc.). It would sell like German Bunds on a risk off day.

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