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This WSJ editorial welcomes the change in India in the form of Modi bringing his executive experience in Gujarat state to the national level. It also points out the risks of Modi following a simple model of state capitalism pursued by China which also has political controls, and of the form in Brazil which invites crony capitalism and limited results. Better says the WSJ to take a new approach to satisfy the growing aspirations of young people who overwhelmingly supported Modi in the hope of better access to jobs and improved standards of living.

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The educational system in Italy suffers from the same problems as the economy- a strong tendency to exclude young people who can bring new energy and new skills to the classroom or the workplace. New teachers are made temporary working at lower salaries with only 1 year contracts. The average age for teachers is 50. A teaching exam for new positions would normally be held every 3 years. The Education Ministry simply postponed this and the exam held in 2012 is the first since 1999. Upto now hiring freezes and budget cuts were common. The exam held in 2012 attracted 321,000 applicants for 11,500 job openings. Young people in other professions such as law who were stuck in temporary work also applied. This also reflects a high unemployment rate of 14% for people ages 24-35.

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Fred Brooks, IBM executive who led the development team for the IBM System/360 mainframe, is the author of Design of Design and of an earlier book Mythical Man-Month that sold 500,000 copies. His unique insights into completing large development projects have helped many tech companies. Brook's law from Mythical Man-Month is that it is futile to simply add engineers to projects in the hope of getting things done faster, as there are a lot of other factors to consider. This is stated by programmers as: "Adding manpower to a project only makes it later." The original design team has to bring newcomers up to speed, and the added distraction is one of the many factors that slow down the project. Brooks offers many new insights in the book Design for Design. One is that constraints are friends which help shrink the designer's search space. Another is that Design is a lot more about art as it is about science. Simply improving the process does not get you great design, it gets you from bad to average....

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A black supporter of Obama, Ms. Hart, tells him- " I'm exhausted of defending you, defending your administration. I've been told that I voted for a man who was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class." This encounter happened at an hour long town hall meeting on CNBC, which John Harwood moderated. Harwood asked Obama whether he was having difficulty connecting with average Americans because of attending Ivy League schools and spending part of his youth overseas. The incident reflects the frustration and disappointment felt by average Americans with the Obama administration and with Obama.

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Krugman points out that the federal tax rate for the top 1% is 34% in 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office, because president Obama let the high end Bush tax cuts to expire. It is the number to remember says Krugman- 34. In 2008 the figure was 28.2. Under Hillary Clinton the average tax rate for the top 1% would go up by 3.4 percentage points, according to the Tax Policy Center. Some of this would help pay for the tution plan to provide access to the middle class to public universities. Under populist Trump, Krugman points to the elimination of the inheritance tax and tax rates going down substantially, and no such programs to promote the upward mobility that everyone is talking about, and no way to pay for a big infrastructure building effort for growth and jobs- upward mobility that is the focus of every candidate's election campaign including Sanders, Trump in appealing to older white working class families, Clinton, Ryan, Bush, and others in both parties.   ...

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Here are 11 big infrastructure projects that are planned across the country. They are part of the $2.2 trillion of projects to build or repair infrastructure, that is estimated by the American Society of Civil Engineers as needed by America today. But there is only $100 billion for infrastructure spending in the Stimulus Plan, and much of this will go to keeping existing infrastructure, a dilapidated bridge here or road there in repair. Only $50 billion is available for transportation projects. The rapid transit planned for California with trains twice as fast as Acela for a 800 mile track is estimated at $45 billion, but there is only $11 billion in the Stimulus for mass transit aand cities like Washington DC for Dulles airport with its need for a airport train, and other mass transit projects around the country wil compete for the same money. As a result most will go unfunded. The Second Avenue Subway in New York at $4.35 billion, Miami Port Tunnel at $1 billion, Bridge to Canada from Detroit for $1.8 billion, Hudson Rail Tunnel for New York at $8.75 billion, Seattle Highway Tunnel at $4.24 billion, Gulf ports at New Orleans and Gulfport, Mississippi at $2.04 billion, tens of billions for new California aqueduct bypassing the delta around Sacramento to bring water from north to arid Southern part of California, NestGen Air Traffic Control for $15 billion to $22 billion, are the other projects on this list. Many of these are badly needed and have been waiting for years to get the necessary investment. This is only a partial list, and suggests that there are a lot of projects that can productively use government investment, so that wasteful spending does not occur. It appears that the projects are there because these areas were neglected for a long period, more like the situation faced during the post Thatcher period in the UK, where infrastructure and services had been neglected for so long that Labor governments could productively channel new investment in these areas to avoid wasteful spending. And it appears that the situation is very different from Japan where the Liberal Democratic Party had a vested interest in keeping its farm and rural base happy with new projects, like a bridge to nowhere, that led to wasteful spending for a decade or more, leading to rising deficits and investments that did not create productive returns in terms of economic growth. By contrast these projects have potential to generate productive returns for years into the future and also are large enough to create jobs and be spread out over a number of years. This could end up being a real bright spot in the current situation. Felix Rohatyn, who helped New York rebuild its finances afte a crisis, has a new book "Bold Endeavors: How our Government Built America, and Why It Must Rebuild Now", using examples like the rebuilding of the Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad, and the Interstate Highway System, and says the US needs to build for the future with more ambitious, better planned projects today. He says, that infrastructure is not an expense, it has to be seen as a vitally needed and productive investment. People like Rohatyn and others see the Stimlulus plan as a missed opportunity because a lot of these projects mentioned here and the numerous others not shown here will simply not see much money from the government to support them and get them off the ground. The idea that this is wasteful government spending that is spreading, may be a danger to this vision and opportunity. At the same time the reality is that if all this was happening during the time of the Erie Canal or the postwar period of the Interstate Highway System it would have been much easier to support. The banking crisis fix is taking away so many of the dollars that could have gone here, that this may be the missed opportunity, the lack of room for visionary investments because of the danger of pushing the government deficit to 60% of GDP with the current spending plans. ...

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A decision by management of the Ginori porcelain tableware company near Florence, Italy, to compete at the low end leads to its bankruptcy. Ginori was considered a prestigious maker of porcelain tableware since 1735, and hired top designers. The decline in formal dining led to a decline in demand. The decision to move to the low end is considered by workers to have been a mistake as low end Chinese imports have dominated the market in Italy. The difficulty of competing at the low end and the need to come up with a product and technological advantage that commands a higher price is a challenge facing Italy's manufacturing industry.

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Parallels between the Taft, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson election campaigns of 1910 and 1912, and the campaigns of 2010 and 2012, drawn by a T.R. biographer. He points to a tumultuous period ahead as lobbyists, outside interests, and the political parties and their supporters battle it out to set the direction of the country.

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The Census Bureau reports that 46.2 million Americans were living in poverty in 2010. This is an increase of 2.6 million over 2009. This is the highest number of Americans living in poverty since 1958, when this statistic was first measured. Poverty is defined for 2010 as income at or below $22,314 for family of four. Also relevant is the median household income which went down to $49,445 in 2010, a decline of 2.3% from 2009. The typical household earned less in 2010 than in 1997, in inflation adjusted terms. The Census Bureau reports 16.3% of Americans had no health insurance coverage in 2010, the same as 2009.

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The European Union Commission says Ireland must recover 13 billion euros in back taxes for giving tax preferences to Apple that are against EU rules. The EU Commission says Ireland allowed Apple to pay a corporate tax rate of 1% on its European profits in 2003, and .005% in 2014. The EU Commissioner says the use of Ireland as the place where Apple pays taxes on operations in Europe has no base in reality, as most profits are earned in other countries outside Ireland. Taxable profits of Apple "did not correspond to economic reality," according to Ms. Vestager, the EU Commissioner.  In the current environment where political upheaval is unsettling the democratic process in the U.S., Britain, Spain, France and Italy, as well as in Brazil and other countries in the developing world- because of deep recessions, and efforts to cut the deficits with deep cuts in state spending including in education and healthcare, basic services- the moves by companies to reduce taxes to these absurdly low levels such as .005% when other companies in the EU are paying 12.5%, is becoming increasingly unpopular. As pointed out in this BBC News article this sounds like the way Carnegie, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt operated during the late 19th century, and were seen as operating in a manner that was above the law. Janet Yellen pointed out at a Boston Fed Conference on inequality in Oct 2014 that the bottom half of the distribution or 62 million households in the U.S. in 2013, had a net worth of about $10,000, One quarter of these households had a net worth of zero dollars. The working class and blue collar workers in the U.S. provide much of the support at Trump rallies. Younger college educated people support Sanders, because of the situation of the working and middle class in the U.S., and a similar situation exists in Europe. It is for the sake of the democratic process and delivering services in education, healthcare, and other basic areas to all, that companies small and large need to pay their fair share of taxes, regardless of size, influence, or technological advantages. Today this is is seen by most leaders who draw public support as the right way forward for the U.S., Latin America, Europe and Asian countries, including proper allocation of resources to best serve the needs of working people. For example the 13 billion euros is equal to all of Ireland's healthcare budget, and 66% of its social welfare budget.    ...

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The Brazilian economy is growing too fast, and this pace not only won't be sustained, but it has signs of serious trouble ahead. The Brazilian economy grew at an estimated annualized pace of 10% in the last 6 months and generated 962,000 jobs between Jan-April of 2010. Growth in 2010 is expected to be 7%. The jump in growth is partly the result of the stimulus measures of the Lula government. But a consensus of experts is that Brazil still saves too little, has not invested enough in infrastructure,and its economy has the potential of 5% sustainable growth each year. The central bank has increased interest rates - increase of 0.75% in April 2010, and economists in Brazil think the rate will go up to 13% in 2011. About $10 billion in cuts in spending have been announced but they are cuts to an already growing budget approved by Congress, so in reality it will only slow the increase in spending. Public debt is at 42.7% of GDP. Real interest rates have fallen from close to 20% in 2003 to between 5-10%. Costs per unit of labor are increasing at about half the rate of real wages according to a finance official. The National Development Bank or BNDES played a role in helping the economy with subsidized loans when the financial markets ran into trouble. It has expanded lending by 50%, with money from the Treasury of 180 billion reais. Some of the measures of the Lula government has reduced the skewed income distribution Brazil, and in doing so has increased consumer demand. Meeting high consumer demand, and meeting the need for commodities like soyabeans and metals from China, has boosted growth in Brazil to twice the sustainable rate and it is now at a par with China and India. But this places Brazil too dependent on the boom in Chinese demand, especially as the stimulus in China slows and the property bubble threatens China's economy. See links to China. A new President after the upcoming Presidential election will have to tackle the high interest rates in 2011, lower commodity prices, and the need for better infrastructure, and make the adjustment to a sustainable pace of growth....

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The fears within Mexico's auto industry that the TPP will allow imports of cheap Chinese auto parts hurting its auto industry, and reversing years of gains made under NAFTA. Canada also has fears about the TPP for its auto industry. Japan uses China and Thailand as part of its supply chain. China is not part of the TPP. Add to this the UAW and Detroit's suspicion of TPP concessions to Japan. This has stalled U.S. negotiations with Japan on the TPP trade agreement in 2015.

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Some of the crude rhetoric at Donald Trump rallies, and use of coarse language, according to the NYT. Working class and older Americans show their anger at a system that appears to have left them behind with slogans, stickers, T-Shirts. The idea of the wall figures in much of this and shows that the wall has become not jut about Mexico but a metaphor that captures this anger, that reflects this anger. Another aspect of the 2016 campaign is that those most vulnerable and most in need of help have not sought the comfort of knowing about programs to improve middle class and working class wages, incomes, to build infrastructure, create jobs, stop companies from shifting jobs overseas, plans for improving accesss to health care and education, to ask for specifics and delivery. This is the supreme irony of the 2016 election campaign that not enough attention is going to what will be done for the middle and working class, and what specifics will be delivered, in what time frame- which is essential for restoring the condition of the American middle and working class to where it was in the 2 decades after the Second World War. ...

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Rehabilitating U.S. war veterans and integrating them back into society is a task American now faces afer its two wars in the Middle East. How well it does this is important and requires resources and sustained effort.

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The situation in Boise, Idaho. Home to many electronics and high tech companies like Micron Technology, Boise has weathered many downturns with unemployment rates well below the national average. This time things are not looking at all like previous downturns, as the unemployment rate in Boise climbed to 6% from 2.7%- it has already approached the national average of 6.7%, and is climbing. This suggests that high tech is also being affected seriously. Unemployment is expected to reach 8% in 2010, about the same as the national average forecast according to Moody's Economy.com. Goldman Sachs forecast is for the 2009 savings rate to be between 6% to 10% by 2009. Families like the Capps and Muirs that have young children or children in teenage years, are now serious savers, as profiled in this description. Down to getting their meat from a calf grown on a family farm in the Rocky mountain region where Boise is located, cutting their own wood in the mountains, buying 11 dozen eggs and freezing the insides of the eggs, buying on deals like $8 winter coats at Old Navy's store, bulk purchases of sugar and staples, growing and canning vegetables, handcrotcheting hats and scarfs for sale on Craigslist and local bazaars. All this from Mrs and Mr Muir including starting a Moneysavers Club, an email group of 30 people. The Muirs are a young family with their first child 5 years ago, who have stable employment, with Mr Muir working as a grape researcher for the state Dept of Agriculture, and his wife a dental assistant. But having taken 2 mortgages to buy their $144,000 home because they could not afford the 20% down payment. The wife's 401K of $3000 going for insulation and fence , and the husband's 401 K savings down to $13,000- reduced to half by the stock market. Suggesting poor decisions on housing debt with low savings for a couple in their thirties. The Capp couple in its forties has also low savings, having $40,000 in student loans, and credit card debt of $11,000 just paid off by using the $10,000 severance package for Mr Capp. The Capps are economizing on everything from skiing to using washable rags instead of paper towels. He worked as a field service engineer for Electroglass, a semiconductor equipment manufacturer based in San Jose which fired two thirds of its field service engineers, including Capp. They also used a $25,000 line of credit on their home to buy a used Toyota 4Runner. Considering their economizing skills, their responding to the downturn by paring down debt as quickly as possible, the information of Mrs Muir's skills at saving, the Capps continuing to use their 253,000 miles Toyota Corolla- these are families that were not crazy spenders, but just families that did not take saving seriously. The Capps made $65,000 from Mr Capps salary and $10,000 from Mrs Capps work at a mental health clinic (after getting a BS in psychology), yet their $2700 in savings suggests no effort was made to save for a rainy day. What this saving and economizing means is that restaurants are closing in large numbers in Boise. Retail stores, including electronics and clothing, are shuttering, All this is leading to higher unemployment, leading to saving measures like those used by the Capps and the Muirs. Meanwhile the numbers for savings accounts at Home Federal Bancorp in Boise, Idaho, a $725 million bank with 15 area branches, shows savings accounts up 26% in December from the previous year. And says the banks consumer banking head, the balances are increasing even as the unemployment rate is going up. Which suggests that Rodriguez and Goldman Sachs may be right (seee link) that the savings rate may reach 10%, and even higher, from what is happening in Boise. Views on currency valuation and the dollar as indicated in the analysis of the article about Rodriguez /Grantham/Scheiff, WSJ, January 2, 2009, may have to be separated from the analysis of what is happening in savings, as the weakening of the dollar relates also to the weakening of other economies and currencies. This steep upturn in saving is likely to affect Chinese exports severely and the Chinese economy. This also affect the German economy, as China imports less from Germany, especially its midsized manufacturers. See links. What is happening on saving, on the other hand, is very real, and happening before our very eyes....

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Wages in emerging markets such as Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia are rising following an increase in wages in China. Malaysia's government announced a minimum wage for the first time. China increased its minimum wage by 8.6% to 1260 yuan ($199) in January 2012. Shenzen region minimum wage was raised 14% to 1500 yuan, and Tianjin region's by 13% to 1310 yuan, according to Xinhua news agency. Rise in minimum wage has ranged from 40% in Thailand to 20% in Indonesia. The new minimum wage proposed by Malaysia's government is about 900 ringgit ($264-$297). In Thailand the new minimum wage is set at 300 baht ($9.78) a day, an increase of about 40%.

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The shortage of labor will make the transition to a workweek of less than 60 hours for existing factory workers in China difficult, say experts. The transition to better working hours will take some time to be implemented as required by China's new labor laws and public pressure in the U.S. and China.

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The Economist magazine points out that Indian companies will have to invest more in innovation if they are to maintain return on investment. It says the GST, government action to reduce corruption since 2012 through court decision on crony capitalism, better functioning markets for land, natural resources and capital, more efficient supply chains, will force large Indian companies to compete by becoming more efficient. Under the previous regime before 2012 large Indian companies were able to make high ROI but this was an illusory advantage, as the growth in the Indian economy could create opportunities for firms that can compete with innovation, quality and efficiency. In this sense the Indian economy is entering a new phase under the Modi administration with stretch goals and efforts to create  the next ten year period of growth very different from the past.

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Working America, an arm of the U.S. trade union the AFL-CIO, conducted conversations with 350,000 voters in 17 U.S. states. Here a representative of Working America, says the overwhelming response to the question "does it make a difference whether Democrats or Republicans are in power for my well being," is reflected in one of the responses- "does it even matter?"

The suggested approach here is for Democrats in particular who have represented working class voters in the past, to start with a fresh approach by creating new conversations with working class Americans.