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More "grounded."
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Updated post on Corsican poverty
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All my academic degrees are in science and engineering, but that doesn't mean I can't read economics. At least in the old days, <i>vendetta</i> meant you were often so grounded, you were six feet under. Last edited by FanDeAliFee; 05-07-2010 at 09:15 PM.. Reason: mend URL typo |
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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. But a closer look on Corsica, explains why it's not a rich region. 2/3 of island covered with mountains, typical mediterranean climate, a lot of nature reserves. Great place to relax and spend holidays 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. Sometimes I think that docdtv is my 40 years older twin brother I find interest in Economy, Engineering, Science, Languages and History; he also, he just knows everything, he can make a very deep historical, economical, linguistics analysis etc. Only difference is a language in which we can express ourselves best, for him it's English, for me (still) Polish. You are great Doc Last edited by Criss_pl; 05-03-2010 at 10:42 AM.. |
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Attitudes, not latitudes?
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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:
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:
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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! |
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Go to Google Earth and type in Tolla, Fr. This is a town on a man made lake (Tolla) in the mountains of Corsica. Google street view will give you an idea what the average medium sized town outside of Ajaccio looks like.
Medium is tiny compared to American standards. The buildings are old and built with local materials. The roads are very narrow and will open your eyes to how people out side the coastal cities live on most of the island. When checking out some of these small villages I loved how many ATVs I saw parked along the road in front of homes. If I wanted to go hide somewhere and didn't want to make it easy to find me, Corsica would be the place. It is a very pretty and rural island.
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They may be poor, but they know how to sing...
Their national anthem, Dio vi salvi Regina : <object width="480" height="360"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/xhlhs"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/xhlhs" width="480" height="360" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object> |
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The $64K question is what is considered poor? From what I have seen via Google street view so far, looks like normal living conditions and architecture for the different areas I came across.
A rich community isn't about how much money the residents of that community make or are worth, it's all about the kind of people who live there.
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corsica, france, part, poorest, region |
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