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  #11  
Old 05-02-2010, 05:51 PM
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Originally Posted by Rictor View Post
Not to say that environmental factors determine everything, but it does give us better insight when it comes to understanding why Alizée turned out so humble and sweet - a combination of not growing up spoiled, having good parents, and ultimately, probably just being born with "sweetheart" genetics that make her appreciate everything that comes her way. :-)
Agreed. I don't know why but most of the people I have met make me feel that people from small towns are much better than those in large metropolitan cities. They are much more humble, down to earth, simple and all other good adjectives you can think of
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Old 05-03-2010, 12:22 AM
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Agreed. I don't know why but most of the people I have met make me feel that people from small towns are much better than those in large metropolitan cities. They are much more humble, down to earth, simple and all other good adjectives you can think of
More "grounded."
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  #13  
Old 05-03-2010, 01:34 AM
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Smile Updated post on Corsican poverty

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By the way, Wikipedia lists the Corsican population as 302,000 in 2008, and the GDP per capita as 20,300 euros in 2006.
I'm glad at least SOME people follow the links I put into my posts! I've now found time to get hard numbers directly from an official agency, the European Union. But I still can't say <i>how</i> poor Corsica is compared to the rest of France, for the want of the local cost-of-living numbers which I have for the USA. Anecdotes may have to do. I was especially disappointed with the obvious mistake published at the "encyclopedic" corsica-isula.com which I newly link. (See the break-out box in the revised posting for all the details.)

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Simple average per capita incomes at each percentage point (if available) would be much more effective.
If a GINI index is reported, an income histogram was required to compute it. That's also true for a Robin Hood index.

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So, are you an Economist?
All my academic degrees are in science and engineering, but that doesn't mean I can't read economics.

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More "grounded."
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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Old 05-03-2010, 02:03 AM
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...If a GINI index is reported, an income histogram was required to compute it. That's also true for a Robin Hood index.
Obviously.

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All my academic degrees are in science and engineering, but that doesn't mean I can't read economics.
What area of enginering?

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At least in the old days, vendetta meant you were often so grounded, you were six feet under.
lol.
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Old 05-03-2010, 10:30 AM
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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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Old 05-03-2010, 10:52 PM
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Smile Attitudes, not latitudes?

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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.
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.

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But a closer look on Corsica, explains why it's not a rich region. 2/3 of island covered with mountains...
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>

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Originally Posted by Criss_pl View Post
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.

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Originally Posted by Criss_pl View Post
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.

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Doc, I can restate your entire 3,100 word novel in one sentence.
Corsica is broke from trying to entertain Alizée for 25 years.
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!
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  #17  
Old 05-04-2010, 03:19 PM
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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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Old 05-04-2010, 04:18 PM
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http://commondatastorage.googleapis....nal/851723.jpg

it's good to be poor....
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Old 05-04-2010, 06:19 PM
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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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Old 05-04-2010, 06:44 PM
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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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