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Consumer confidence on rise

Poverty rates, inflation, unemployment, food scarcity, and social unrest are on the rise and the government is not only failing to combat it but in some cases is contributing to it, the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights argues in a report.

Pay increase and a fall in unemployment a boost for the Bank of England

this article relates to our week 9, study because it tells us the the consumers demand for energy is inelastic and how the government decisions affects the price of company products.

The Thai government wants to increase the alcohol average tax by a significant percentage. The tax ceiling for the beer and wine will increase to 2000 baht per liter, which is very significant. This is aimed at increasing the government revenue, as the demand for alcohol is inelastic and increasing in consumption. Thailand has a significant percentage of foreign tourist and foreigners living in the country who enjoy alcoholic beverages. Locals are increasing in their income inelastic and consuming more alcohol. This will hopefully reduce the demand, as alcohol is extremely addictive and have negative externalities such as dream driving causing many innocent deaths.

The UK price floor for tobacco.

The following article talks about the riots that have been occurring in Venezuela throughout the past few months. It discusses how protesters are angry at the government for rising unemployment and the scarcity of basic items and other commodities. It talks about how already 25 people have died during the riots, according to the government.

"As the country launches itself on a higher growth trajectory but with rising unemployment, a report says that unemployability is a bigger crisis than unemployment."

Sinopec profit raises directly link to the relaxation of fuel price controls. Sinopec is a government control company, which controls a great deal of the lucrative oil market. When the government eased the fuel price control, it meant that the price could be increased by the oligopoly. This allowed greater margin of profits, which will benefit Sinopec and the government in terms of taxes. The problem is that when price of fuel which is an essential inelastic commodity increases, the inflation will increase for the average consumer. The consumer will have to pay more his daily consumption, which will affect the prices of the goods and services that he is selling.

The following article discusses how the local waters near Hong Kong have been depleted of fish since the 1980s. Therefore the suppliers are shifting their method of production to having fish farms located in industrial buildings to meet Hong Kong's demand for live fish.

The following article talks about how China has loosened its one baby policy, in order to face the growing problem of a rapidly aging population and slowing economic growth. However many young couples are not taking advantage of this new policy due to the rapidly rising costs of living in China.

The following article states how Tesla, which is an electric car company, worries about the supply for their lithium ion batteries. Their supplier Samsung is not able to keep up the supply of batteries so they are looking for methods of increasing battery production together. Therefore although demand for batteries increased, the supplier Samsung was not able to keep up with the rising demand for batteries.