World Market
Today modern transport is so extensive and so rapid that many commodities have a world market: that is, a change in the price of the commodity in one part of the world affects the price in the rest of the world. Such commodities are wheat, coffee, oils, and the basic raw materials such as wool, cotton, mineral oil, rubber, tin, lead, zinc, and uranium. What are the necessary requirements for a commodity to have such a wide market?
First, there must be a wide demand. The basic necessities of life (e.g. wheat, vegetable oils, wool, cotton) answer this requirement. In contrast, such goods as national costumes, books translated into little-used languages, souvenirs, postcards of local views and foods which satisfy local tastes, have only a local demand.
Second, commodities must be physically capable of being transported. Land and buildings are almost impossible to transport. A customer may require a personal service from the producer, but the distance he can travel is usually limited. Labor, too, is practically immobile, workers being loath, in spite of the attraction of a higher wage, to move to a different country or even to a different locality. Closely connected with, this is the action of governments, which by tariff policy or import quotas, may effectively prevent certain commodities from entering the country.
Third, the cost of transport must not be prohibitive; they must be small in relation to the value of the commodity. Thus the market for bricks is small, while that for diamonds is world-wide. Similarly, wheat and oil are cheap to transport compared with coal because they are more easily handled, though as sea transport is the cheapest form of transport, coal mined near the coast can be sent long distances.
Last, the commodity must be durable. Goods which perish quickly, such as milk, bread, fresh cream and strawberry, can not be sent long distances. Nevertheless, modern developments, such as refrigeration, canning and air freight transport, are extending the market even for these goods.
James and the Giant Peach
by Roald Dahl
It was quite a large hole, the sort of thing an animal about the size of a fox might have made.
James knelt down in front of it and poked his head and shoulders inside.
He crawled in.
He kept on crawling.
This isn't just a hole, he thought excitedly. It's a tunnel!
The tunnel was damp and murky, and all around him there was the curious bittersweet smell of fresh peach. The floor was soggy under his knees, the walls were wet and sticky, and peach juice was dripping from the ceiling. James opened his mouth and caught some of it on his tongue. It tasted delicious.
He was crawling uphill now, as though the tunnel were leading straight toward the very center of the gigantic fruit. Every few seconds he paused and took a bite out of the wall. The peach flesh was sweet and juicy, and marvelously refreshing.
He crawled on for several more yards, and then suddenly -- bang - -the top of his head bumped into something extremely hard blocking his way. He glanced up. In front of him there was a solid wall that seemed at first as though it were made of wood. He touched it with his fingers. It certainly felt like wood, except that it was very jagged and full of deep grooves.
"Good heavens!" he said. "I know what this is! I've come to the stone in the middle of the peach!"
Then he noticed that there was a small door cut into the face of the peach stone. He gave a push. It swung open. He crawled through it, and before he had time to glance up and see where he was, he heard a voice saying, "Look who's here!" And another one said, "We've been waiting for you!
Economics
Economics is the science of production, exchange, and consumption in economic systems. It shows how scarce resources can be used to increase human wealth and welfare.
Its central focus is on scarcity and choice. Scarcity is the fundamental economic condition of human life. The resources available to produce goods are limited, so that the goods themselves are scarce. Economic scarcity requires people to make economic choices, and economics is about comparing alternatives and choosing among them.
The need for choices is evident at all levels of life, from personal affairs to matters of worldwide urgency. On personal level, one might like to have excellent food and clothes, spacious living quarters furnished in style, frequent travel and so on. Yet because their incomes will provide only modest amounts of these goods, most people must always choose among them. For example, the price of a new coat may equal 50 gallons of gasoline, a weekend trip home, 10 restaurant meals, or a 2 degrees warmer room temperature all winter. Each purchase may foreclose buying the others. Such decisions are made routinely by everyone because scarcity requires an endless series of choices.
Companies are also forced by scarcity to make careful choices among alternatives as they convert inputs into outputs. Both a local baker and the huge General Motors Corporation, for example, must decide each day and week how many workers and other inputs to employ, and then use them efficiently in producing bread and automobiles.
At the national level, there are also important economic choices to be made. For example, an increase in the nation's military forces and weaponry might make the country more secure from attack. But the added military spending might have to be obtained by cutting back on programs to inoculate children against disease and to provide medical care to the aged. Better roads may entail worse libraries; more funds for health care may mean less for education. Even more broadly, actions to reduce price inflation may cause national output to fall and unemployment to rise.
To all such small and large choices, economists apply economic analysis, a system of concepts and logical hypotheses that has been developed over more than two centuries in debates among generations of economists. The debates continue, and economics itself is still changing.
Jenny: What do Ronnie say to it?
Beatie: He don't mind. He don't even know though. He ent
never bin here. Not in the three years I known him. But
I'll tell you (she jumps up and moves around as she talks) I
used to read the comics he bought for his nephews and he
used to get riled —(Now Beatie begins to quote Ronnie, and when she does
she imitates him so well in both manner and intonation that
in fact as the play progresses we see a picture of him through
her.)
'Christ, woman, what can they give you that you can be-
so absorbed?' So you know what I used to do?
I used to get a copy of the Manchester Guardian and sit with that wide
open — and a comic behind !
Jimmy: Manchester Guardian ? Blimey Joe — he don' believe
in hevin' much fun then ?
Beatie: That's what I used to tell him. 'Fun?' he say, 'fun?
Playing an instrument is fun, painting is fun, reading a
book is fun, talking with friends is fun — but a comic? A
comic? for a young woman of twenty-two?'
Jenny: [handing out meal and sitting down herself) He sound a
queer bor to me. Sit you down and eat gal.
Beatie: (enthusiastically). He's alive though.
Jimmy: Alive? Alive you say? What's alive about someone
who can't read a comic ? What's alive about a person that
reads books and looks at paintings and listens to classical
music?
(There is a silence at this, as though the question answers
itself — reluctantly.)
Jimmy: Well, it's all right for some I suppose.
Beatie: And then he'd sneak the comic away from me and
read it his-self !
by Arnold Wesker
Japan shrinking as birthrate falls to lowest level in history
In 20 there were 921,000 births and 1.37m deaths, with government efforts failing to encourage families to have more children
Hanai/Reuters
Japan suffered its biggest population decline on record this year, according to new figures that underline the country’s losing battle to raise its birth rate.
The number of births fell to its lowest since records began more than a century ago, the health and welfare ministry said, soon after parliament approved an immigration bill that will pave the way for the arrival of hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers to address the worst labour shortage in decades.
The ministry estimated 921,000 babies will have been born by the end of 20 – 25,000 fewer than last year and the lowest number since comparable records began in 99. It is also the third year in a row the number of births has been below one million.
Combined with the estimated number of deaths this year – a postwar high of 1.37 million – the natural decline of Japan’s population by 448,000 is the biggest ever.
The data suggests the government will struggle to reach its goal of raising the birth rate – the average number of children a woman has during her lifetime – to 1.8 by April 2026. The current birth rate stands at 1.43, well below the 2.07 required to keep the population stable.
The Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has described Japan’s demographics as a national crisis and promised to increase childcare places and introduce other measures to encourage couples to have more children.
But the number of children on waiting lists for state-funded daycare increased for the third year in a row last year, raising doubts over his plans to provide a place for every child by April 2020.
Japanese people have an impressive life expectancy – 87.2 years for women and 81.01 years for men – which experts attribute to regular medical examinations, universal healthcare coverage and, among older generations, a preference for Japan’s traditional low-fat diet.
But the growing population of older people is expected to place unprecedented strain on health and welfare services in the decades to come. Some of those costs will be met by a controversial rise in the consumption (sales) tax, from 8% to 10%, next October.
Earlier this year the government said 26.1 million – or just over 20% of the total population of 126.7 million – were aged 70 and over.
The number of centenarians, meanwhile, had risen to 69,785 as of September this year, with women making up 88% of the total.
Japan has the highest proportion of older people – or those aged 65 and over – in the world, followed by Italy, Portugal and Germany.
The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo estimated that more than 35% of Japanese will be aged 65 or over by 2040.
We've got good news and bad news for "Friends" fans who've been longing to see the gang get back together again.
As for the good: The first trailer for the big-screen reunion you've been waiting for is here!
And the bad: It's totally fake.
But that's OK! After all, if the stars of the series are to be believed, it's unlikely that the cast will ever get back together for a real reunion. So this faux "Friends" fun is the closest we may ever come to seeing Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey all together again.
Called "The One With the Reunion," the trailer lacks glimpses of Central Perk or ridiculously spacious rent-controlled apartments, but it's packed with modern-day scenes of all the familiar faces.
The plot focuses on where the once close-knit group would be years after the 2004 series finale.
"This picks up a few years where the final season left off with (Ross' kids) Ben and Emma grown up," a description from creators at Smasher reads. "Mike and Phoebe have trouble with marriage, Monica and Chandler are getting a divorce, Joey couldn't find someone, and Ross and Rachel have trouble after many years of not being together! Filled with some surprise appearances by today's actors, along with some old friends (no pun intended), this movie will be an all-star extravaganza, while showing a lesson in being there for each other."
The clip is cobbled together from mini-reunions the stars have held on their own post-"Friends" projects — when Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston reunited on "Cougar Town" and when David Schwimmer paid a visit to Matt LeBlanc's "Episodes."
Matt LeBlanc explains why a 'Friends' reunion wouldn't work
A revival of the show would have to be called "Old Friends," joked the actor.
Matt LeBlanc is siding with his former "Friends" castmates who think a revival of the show is a bad idea.
During a visit to the "Steve" show on Monday, the 50-year-old "Man With a Plan" star explained to host Steve Harvey that reviving the beloved sitcom, which aired from 1994 to 2004 on NBC, would mean seeing the Central Perk gang at midlife.
Like, 'Old Friends'? Personally, I don't think so," said LeBlanc. "I've talked to the writers about it. That show was about a very finite period in your life, between 20 and 30, when you’re out of school but your life hadn’t really started yet and your friends are your family, and you’re kind of finding your way. When that period is over, it's over."
Excitement about a reunion between Joey, Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler and Phoebe heated up again after a fan-made "Friends" movie trailer on YouTube quickly went viral in January.
But, while the actor's former co-star Jennifer Aniston teased "Friends" fans last month by suggesting that "anything is a possibility," LeBlanc thinks the whole idea is plain silly.
"All the characters have gone their separate ways," he told Harvey.
Besides, he said, Joey Tribbiani's life today wouldn't make for must-watch TV.
"I always have this standard go-to joke when people say, 'We want to see what Joey’s doing now.' Nobody wants to see Joey at his colonoscopy! Nobody wants to see that," he said.
Manchester United form not down to relationship with players, says Mourinho
José Mourinho refuses to believe his relationship with Manchester United’s players is partly to blame for the team’s struggles this season and insisted the only way that could be a factor is if they were dishonest” footballers.
United are languishing in seventh place, with a negative goal difference, after successive draws against Crystal Palace and Southampton, meaning the 20-times league champions are 19 points behind Manchester City at the top of the table and eight adrift of the Champions League places.
Three days after allegedly calling Paul Pogba a virus” in a dressing-room outburst at Southampton, Mourinho would not be drawn on their troubled relationship but, in a more controlled exchange at his latest press conference, he insisted he did not follow the theory that various players were doing badly because they disliked the manager.
I don’t understand that story,” Mourinho said. If you think a player only plays, in your words, when he is behind the manager, what I have to call these players – or in this case, what you are calling them – is dishonest.
A football player is paid – and very well paid – to be a professional. What is that? It is to train every day to his limits, to play every game to his limits, to behave socially according to the nature of his job, to respect the millions of fans around the world and to respect the hierarchies of the club.
If a player doesn’t do that, it is one thing is to perform well and not so well, another thing is to be a professional. If you say a player plays well or badly because of how good a manager is, you are calling the player dishonest.”
As ever with Mourinho, the key was to work out the exact point he was trying to make and, in this case, it felt conspicuously like another attempt to absolve himself of blame for their predicament, while possibly getting a message to Pogba, the subject of many questions. Mourinho may also be scoring a few points at the
expense of the television pundits, including many former United players, he has come to resent because of their criticisms.
Because you are a journalist and not a professional player, I understand your question,” Mourinho said. But when pundits, who were professional players, say ‘this player is not playing for the manager’, did they do that when they were players? Were they dishonest players? If they were, they shouldn’t be in front of a camera speaking to millions of people.
I disagree totally with that. You have to analyse a player by: ‘is he performing, yes or no?’. You shouldn’t go in that direction [the relationship with the manager] because you are calling the players dishonest.”
When it was pointed out an employee’s work could be adversely affected in various walks of life if that person did not get on with the people at the top, Mourinho told the journalist asking the question: So you have only one solution. If you don’t like your boss, you have to leave the newspaper. It is still a dishonest factor. Be honest and leave.”
Of the latest alleged row with Pogba, he said: I am not going to analyse the [Southampton] performance individually. I told after the game the reason why, in the second half especially, we did not have wave after wave of attacks.
I told the reason why we were not consistent and that we didn’t keep the opponent under pressure because we lost too many balls.
I told that they were not the best decisions in terms of ‘how many touches I need to pass the ball’ and the speed of the decision. I told that without saying one single name and I am going to say the same thing without names.”
https://www.theguardian.com/football/20/dec/04/manchester-united-top-four-miracle-mourinho
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