cafeconomics

 Here are some notes from Daniel Kahneman's book 'Thinking Fast and Slow': 1. Contrary to the assumptions of economic models, human beings are not rational.  We often let our heuristics guide our conclusions rather than statistical facts.  2. You find a person with the qualities that are more representative of a librarian than a farmer and you conclude that he must be a librarian. Perhaps you are blind to the statistical fact that there are more number of farmers than librarians in this world. Our perceptions can make us blind to realities. 3. Many of our water cooler conversations at office are based on our own perceptions rather than realities. 4. Halo Effect - you are charmed by a beautiful woman and assume everything she says is correct. You associate one good quality with many other qualities which may not be valid. 5. Expert intuition works like sixth sense. It is your brain responding, perhaps subconsciously. It's like a child looking at a dog and recognizing it.

Here's my budget  wish list for 2024: 1 . Universal Basic Income(Support): The total work force of the United States is less than 17 crores using which they are able to generate a real GDP in excess of 20 trillion dollars(2022 wiki). The total workforce of Europe is under 20 crores(2022 wiki). Except for China which has a work force of 78 crores(2022 wiki), no other country has bigger workforce than India which has 55 crores. As per recent KLEMS database of RBI, the workforce number is 64.3 crores but many economists have questioned this number. With the onus on productivity we are moving towards a world in which investments are technology-intensive, definitely not labor intensive. Some economists have envisioned a world where machines take over the bulk of the work load with minimal human intervention. In India, the annual requirement for jobs is around 2 crores whereas job creation per annum is limited to 40 to 50 lakhs in spite of the best efforts of the incumbent government. T