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Prof. Peterson of Harvard and Hanushek of the Hoover Institution, authors with Woessmann of the book "Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School," offer some startling reminders about the importance of education to economic growth and incomes in countries. Simply by raising the math standards in the U.S. to the higher standards in Canada would raise GDP by three fourths of one percentage point. One advantage that the U.S. enjoys comes from its good university systems, open markets, rule of law, tax rates, and open immigration policies, which give it about two thirds of a percentage point in higher GDP growth per year. The estimates are from the authors calculations. For the period 1960-2009, a period of rapid growth in Asian countries Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, higher test scores in math and reading compared to the wrold average as measured by NAEP test and PISA, have led to 2% higher GDP growth. NAEP shows only 32% of U.S. high school students proficient in math compared to 45% in Germany and 49% in Canada and 63% in Singapore. By contrast to Korea and Taiwan, Peru, Argentina, the Philippines and S. Africa have about 2% less in GDP growth because of lower scores compared to the world average....

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Apple introduces the iPhone 5C in September 2013 for buyers at the low end. The 5C is priced at $99.

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Apple did its first product launch in China with the launch of the iPhone 5C in China. The phone is priced at $99 in the U.S. and targets buyers at the low end. In China where subsidies kick in later in lower monthly phone bills the price is much higher at about 4500 yuan or $733. Buyers in smaller cities in China pay about 1000 to 2000 yuan for a smartphone. Apple's market share is about 5% in China, behind Samsung at 18% and Chinese manufacturers Huawei, Lenovo and HTC.

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Japanese carmakers are still recovering from the loss of sales in China's market after the dispute over the Senkaku islands, and are losing ground to GM, VW and other carmakers in the interior of the country.

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S&P Dow Jones Indices which runs the Dow Jones Industrial Averages Index says it will drop Alcoa, Bank of America and HP from the index and replace these companies with Goldman Sachs, Visa and Nike. HP was the second computer company after IBM that was added in 1997. Alcoa was made part of the index in 1959.

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Bell Labs building was built in 1962 and designed by Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen. It was closed in 2007. Plans are being made for renovation in 2013 even as there is an abundance of office space in New Jersey. This is part of the 473 acre site for Bell Labs in New Jersey. Scientists working at the site pioneered in the development of the transistor, cellphones, touch tone dialing and fiber optic communications, winning 7 Nobel Prizes for research.