There is little to recommend the COVID-19 pandemic. It has caused large loss of life, been devastating economically and exacerbated social problems. But one possible positive unintended consequence of the pandemic is a spurring of innovation. That appears to be the case for medical science which has rapidly developed vaccines, treatments and a better understanding of viruses. It might be the case in other areas as well. Is 2020 a spur to a new more innovative era? Take for example, flying cars. From Toyota to GM, come announcements of ambitious plans to develop such vehicles. Bloomberg reports that “Hyundai Motor Group “is stepping up its pursuit of flying cars, planning a full lineup of aerial vehicles that it envisages zigzagging city skies within a decade.” Hyundai claims it may debut a human-driven flying vehicle as early as 2023, though ultimately its aim is for them to be autonomous. Ahh, the self-driving vehicle. In 2008, we predicted self-driving cars would be available in 7 – 10 years and commercially viable soon after. Unlike our prediction about oil, we were wrong about autonomous cars (though we still expect they will eventually become viable). We make no predictions about flying vehicles or even that we are on the verge of a new era of innovation sparked by the circumstances of the pandemic. But neither will we be surprised if that is the case.
We’re out next week on important business (Editor: business? INTN: The business of fun) but back on October 29th.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Extreme Poverty Increases
As we have noted here more than once, the last 50 to 70 years were ones of enormous progress and success although you would not know it from the laments of anti-capitalists, conservative cultural crusaders and all the rest of the pessimistic, narrow-minded, negative kin. One of the measures of that success was the remarkable decrease in the percentage of people living in extreme poverty. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic is disrupting that success. According to a new World Bank report on extreme poverty, for the first time since 1998, extreme poverty will increase this year. Even more worrisome, the report asserts that not only the world’s most vulnerable are being hit hard but the pandemic is creating millions of “new poor.” These “new poor…are more urban, better educated, and less likely to work in agriculture than those living in extreme poverty before COVID-19.” One hopes this year’s increase in extreme poverty is a short, temporary one. But the report also notes that climate change and recent violent conflicts make alleviating poverty more difficult than in past years. If the world comes to its senses and recognizes the enormous progress that was made the last many decades, and how it was achieved, we are still hopeful this is a short, temporary setback.
Chinese Billionaire Wealth Increases
You have probably seen the news that Jeff Bezos is richer than ever. NPR and other news organizations have been calling this out for months and attempting to illustrate it with a variety of examples. This week they noted Bezos can provide $80,000 to every one of his workers and still be as wealthy as he is today. We prefer to present the statistic this way: Jeff Bezos can give International Need to Know $63.8 billion and still be as rich as ever. But it is not just Jeff Bezos and not even just American billionaires who are doing well in the current pandemic economy. The most recent Billionaires Insights 2020 report produced by UBS and PWC finds that in China from 2019 to 2020 there was a 41.2 percent increase in billionaire’s wealth. Since 2009, China has by far the largest increase in billionaire wealth in the world at 1146 percent. Much of this is due to new successful Chinese tech companies such as Tencent (producer of WeChat) and ByteDance (producer of TikTok). All of this wealth creation is good but with it comes inequality. In fact, China’s inequality numbers are one of the worst in the world as we delve into in our upcoming book.
Pandemics and Flying Cars
There is little to recommend the COVID-19 pandemic. It has caused large loss of life, been devastating economically and exacerbated social problems. But one possible positive unintended consequence of the pandemic is a spurring of innovation. That appears to be the case for medical science which has rapidly developed vaccines, treatments and a better understanding of viruses. It might be the case in other areas as well. Is 2020 a spur to a new more innovative era? Take for example, flying cars. From Toyota to GM, come announcements of ambitious plans to develop such vehicles. Bloomberg reports that “Hyundai Motor Group “is stepping up its pursuit of flying cars, planning a full lineup of aerial vehicles that it envisages zigzagging city skies within a decade.” Hyundai claims it may debut a human-driven flying vehicle as early as 2023, though ultimately its aim is for them to be autonomous. Ahh, the self-driving vehicle. In 2008, we predicted self-driving cars would be available in 7 – 10 years and commercially viable soon after. Unlike our prediction about oil, we were wrong about autonomous cars (though we still expect they will soon become viable). We make no predictions about flying vehicles or even that we are on the verge of a new era of innovation sparked by the circumstances of the pandemic. But neither will we be surprised if that is the case.
