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Mark Roper

BBC News - Is Hong Kong really the world's freest economy? - 1 views

  • Hong Kong has been ranked as the world's freest economy for the past 18 years, a title bestowed on it by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank.
  • Hong Kong's free-market credentials have long masked a more complicated picture than its model economy status suggests
  • the introduction of a minimum wage
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • gross domestic product per head is high at $32,000
  • disparity between rich and poor is wide
  • More than half of the population earn less than HK$11,000 ($1,400; £920) a month and household incomes have barely increased over the past 10 years despite a booming economy
  • government provides public housing to about 50% of the population.
  • The Hong Kong government is also directly involved in other, sometimes surprising, areas of the economy.
  • Disneyland
  • major shareholder in MTR Corp
  • government relies on land sales for revenue
  • July last year, 200,000 people marched to voice their dissatisfaction over the widening gap between rich and poor and the high property prices.
  • Welfare spending has doubled since 1997
Mark Roper

BBC - Future - Science & Environment - Is world peace possible? - 0 views

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    Psychologist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker at Harvard University thinks it is completely conceivable that wars between countries might go the way of slave auctions, debtors' prisons and other barbaric customs.
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