Bicycles getting crushed under India’s rushing prosperity

This is a superb article which came in ET yday. It is by Neeraj Kaushal of Columbia.

She points how we in India are giving up bicycle where west is taking it up. One keeps getting to hear from friends oin Europe and US, how bicycles are kind of getting preferred. In US one can even take bicycles in the metro train and use it extensively on roads. There are lanes for cycles etc.

Apart from bicycles one even sees some picking up for the cycle rickshaw. And it is not in some random low key regions. One sees these rickshaws in Times Square in NY!

Kaushal says cycles has other benefits apart from lower traffic congestion:

What is the source of increase in US debt?

In a followup research to this, Kevin Kliesen and Daniel Thornton point the source for rise in US debt.

It is mainly on account of rise in expenditure in mediclaim and social security. As these expenditures are difficult to reduce (and would only rise), strains on debt to continue:

This analysis suggests that the increase in the debt over the period 1975-2007 was not only a consequence of increased government spending without increased revenues, but also that the government increased payments to individuals through Social Security, Medicare, and other payments without sufficiently reducing spending elsewhere in the budget. In short, these trends, as the CBO’s recent Long-Term Budget Outlook makes clear, will continue to strain federal, state, and local budgets as they consume an ever larger percentage of federal spending dollars.

A friend pointed to this wonderful link on US debt clock. Must check this!

Lessons on debt ceiling from Denmark

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of Peterson Institute points to debt ceiling lessons from Denmark.

Denmark too has a debt ceiling but is much higher than the public debt/GDP ratio. In US, debt ceiling is much closer to public debt/GDP ratio.  So there is no real chance of politicizing the event in Denmark as it has been the case in US.