Japan Needs More Babies

Just read an article in the WSJ about how Japan may consider an increase in its consumption tax from its current level of 5%. The reason - they need the revenue to cope with the aging population in Japan. It's a similar issue to that of social security in the United States. As the population ages and there are not as many children born (as a percentage of the population), there are fewer and fewer wage earners to contribute to social security payments. As a result, payments or taxes must be higher. Birth rates are a key economic measure to monitor when looking at the long-term challenges of supporting the aging population. To put in perspective how dire Japan's situation is, they are ranked second to last in terms of birth rate - at 8.1 births per 1000 population. Germany's in a pretty bad situation as well with 8.2 births / 1000 population. Some benchmarks from the CIA World Factbook:

#1 - Niger - 50.16 births / 1000 population

#119 - Israel - 17.71 births / 1000 population

#152 - United States - 14.16 births / 1000 population

#159 - China - 13.45 births / 1000 population

#185 - United Kingdom - 10.67 births / 1000 population

#221 - Germany - 8.2 births / 1000 population

#222 - Japan - 8.1 births / 1000 population

It's obviously important to consider the mortality rate as well, but most developed countries are generally close on that measure. Japan's and Germany's economies are going to face an incredible challenge in the coming years.

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Biofuels May Hinder Anitglobal-Warming Efforts

Read an interesting article a couple weeks back in the WSJ on how biofuels may actually increase carbon emissions in the medium to long-term. Apprently the shifts in land-use necessary to support the production of bio-materials like soybeans, corn, or palm could in fact release more carbon emissions. The time it takes to get carbon-neutral on some of these projects is pretty crazy - 319 years for soybean biodiesel from Brazil (assuming you're clearing rainforest), 93 years for corn ethanol from the U.S. (assuming you're clearing grasslands), 86 years for palm biodiesel from Indonesia (assuming you're clearing rainforest). I suppose biofuels really aren't meant to reduce carbon emissions, but just crazy that they potentially exacerbate the problem so much.

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I think Duke can have one of the strongest entrepreneurial communities in the world. Are we there yet? Well, not yet. But there's a tremendous amount of momentum that I saw build in just the past two years while I was getting my MBA at Duke. While leading Duke's 10th annual business plan competition, the Duke Start-Up Challenge (DSC) , last year, I witnessed a near doubling of participation on campus in just a single year. The interest on the ground was clearly there and building rapidly. But now that I'm an alum, I'm looking back and wondering ... how do we rev-up the Duke entrepreneurial community even more? I read a great article by Daniel Isenberg, a professor of management at Babson, called " How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution " in the June edition of the Harvard Business Review. Isenberg outlines nine prescriptions for governments that want to create entrepreneurship ecosystems in their countries. Although he was focused on governments an...

Wi-Fi for the Third World

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