Quote:
Originally Posted by Criss_pl
Great analysis doc, I like your point not comparing absolute GDP value. But I can't agree that Corsica is a very poor region. Yes, it's the poorest region of mainland France, but when we look on Eurostat 2007 raport showing GDP as a percent of EU average GDP?
Corsica makes 84.5% of EU, while whole France - 108.5% of EU average, which is in absolute numbers 27000€, taking into account PPS standard. It's Île de France which rises national average so high. Just look, Picardie - 85.7, Lorraine - 88.7, Basse-Normandie - 88.3 It doesn't look so bad for Corsica. |
Of course I never said Corsica was the poorest part of Europe, and hardly the poorest part of the world. Indeed, I pointed out that even Mexico is among the better-off countries, because it lives in the OECD "basement" with a few other place like Poland. As for Corsica, the key question is this - what is its income, doing what would be a <a href="http://www.economy-point.org/p/purchasing-power-standard.html">PPS</a> correction <b>for Corsica</b>, rather than a PPS correction for France as a whole. Please correct me if I misunderstand the geographical resolution of the PPS correction, which I think is national, not local. (I am rather certain all quoted <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity">PPP</a> (sic.) corrections are national, not local.)
There is detailed, free (albeit unsourced) data on living costs in US localities at
http://www.bestplaces.net. For example, no wonder Simon and Garfunkel were "Feelin' Groovy," because they lived in the very nice neighborhood described here:
http://www.bestplaces.net/zip-code/F...ork-11375.aspx You can click on "Cost of Living" to see how much things cost relative to the US as a whole, and click on "Economy" to compare local and national household income histograms, among other data. Please let me know if there is anything like this available for Europe.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Criss_pl
But a closer look on Corsica, explains why it's not a rich region. 2/3 of island covered with mountains...
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Long ago, mountainous Switzerland was a poor country, and sadly, its major export was mercenary soldiers, which is why to this day the Pope has Swiss guards. (It seems Corsica did the same thing, except the soldiers stayed home and played <i>vendetta</i> with each other.) Then came the industrial and scientific revolutions, and the Swiss started making watches, pharmaceuticals and other things which 500 years ago were called "spices." These things travel very easily, because they are so small and light per Euro of value, and so can be created anywhere.
Alizée's favorite high school subjects were chemistry and physics, and you know how she likes computers. Maybe if the music business becomes too bad, she can get very busy and breed a large number of super-Corsicans, so Corsica can become the first Swiss canton with an ocean-going navy!
Do not laugh too hard, because Archimedes called Syracuse on Sicily home. <i>Noli turbare circulos meos!</i>
Quote:
Originally Posted by Criss_pl
And inequalities are very visible in Europe, even within borders of one country. As I'm visiting Germany from time to time, I know something about that. Difference between West and East Germany is still visible, I know that Germans pumped about 2 trillions(ahh your short scale  , but you feel it when you travel between those 2 parts of Germany. People are different, 50 years of communism make the diiference. |
I was making a lot of money when the Berlin Wall fell. While I usually have not helped people in Europe, because so many other places need the money much more, on that occasion I sent the German Red Cross $200. One reason I did this was that it gave me permission to tell a joke at that time. I said that I wondered if there were some farsighted BRD taxpayers who were buying the stones being torn down from from the Berlin Wall to build a new wall one meter to the west of the old location.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Criss_pl
Sometimes I think that docdtv is my 40 years older twin brother  ... |
For those who don't know, before the Second World War, my father's family lived near to where Criss_pl lives now. But we never came back, and so the simple truth is that none of our men ever met any of the charming women in his family.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jalen
Doc, I can restate your entire 3,100 word novel in one sentence.
Corsica is broke from trying to entertain Alizée for 25 years.
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That may be short and funny, but of course is very untrue.
A concise, less inaccurate, summary might be:
American 1: What's French for "Appalachia"?
American 2: "Corsica."
I will not talk about her Mom for now, but Alizée's Dad bears some resemblance to an improved version of Corsica's tourist industry, speaking economically. He is not an IT consultant as I had once guessed, but a civil servant doing IT work in France's social security system, paid by Paris. (He entered the public record by winning a civic award for his work.)
This makes him a year-round export industry, unlike the highly seasonal export industry known as the tourist throng, which gives Corsica "stretch marks." Further, because it is a luxury, Corsica's main private industry, tourism, collapses worse than the vast majority of industries during something like a Great Recession. If anything, Jo's work not only holds steady during an economic decline, but might even increase anti-cyclically (e.g. unemployment claims).
Much of a generation ago, I had a friend in Melbourne. FL, an English immigrant who worked for an aerospace firm. When he lost his IT job, the FBI hired him to move to mountainous and economically humble West Virginia, to do IT work there. It is easy to "offshore" IT work, whether to Bangalore, Corsica or even all the way across the Potomac River into West Virginia.
I do not know if Corsica has a high seniority Senator named Byrd, but all the same Paris does indeed send a lot of exportable work to the island anyway.
I am not fundraising a dance and theater scholarship for students at the school which educated Alizée because Corsica is the poorest place in the world. She EARNED that money by so graciously accommodating us with her entourage in Paris. (I will admit her Artistic Director Jean-René Etienne did not stand on his head and count to 69, but that would have messed up his hair!) The reason I explain that Corsica is the poorest part of France is that I just want to make my job a little bit easier. I am lazy.
Besides, <i>Moi... Lolita</i> is a ready-made "poster-child" video for the scholarship pre-burned into the brains of millions of French people, which Alizée's French fans could exploit to continue the fundraising effort for years to come.
P.S. Archimedes boasted that if you gave him a place to stand, he could use a lever to move the world. Perhaps Alizée can work on this, zeroing out the planet's equatorial tilt, so that it could be Spring all the time and tourists would no longer give Corsica stretch marks!