Cost of Living - Sydney and the world

Jack Dikian

August 2011

Ever since the global financial crises spanning the last 3 or so years we, in Australia, have been to a great extent been insulated – although there are a number of predictors indicating we are not out of the woods just yet.

I wanted to take a look at where we are ranked as liviable cities compared with general cost of living. Five of Australia’s mainland capital cities have been ranked in the top eleven liveable cities in the world and in 2007 it was judged the best in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Quality of Living Survey 2006 from Mercer Human Resource Consulting placed Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane among the top 35 cities in the world in which to live. Which ranked them ahead of London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo and New York.

The table below provides cost of living figures ranked by the most expensive cities to the least expensive.

These are from Mercer’s Cost of Living and rental accommodation costs comparisons and are derived from a survey conducted in March 2011. March 2011 exchange rates and Mercer’s international basket of goods and services are used as basis measurements.

Mercer is a global leader in human resource consulting, outsourcing and investment service.

Rank 2010	City	Country
1	LUANDA	ANGOLA
2	TOKYO	JAPAN
3	NDJAMENA	CHAD
4	MOSCOW	RUSSIA
5	GENEVA	SWITZERLAND
6	OSAKA	JAPAN
7	LIBREVILLE	GABON
8	ZURICH	SWITZERLAND
8	HONG KONG	HONG KONG
10	COPENHAGEN	DENMARK
11	SINGAPORE	SINGAPORE
11	OSLO	NORWAY
13	VICTORIA	SEYCHELLES
14	SEOUL	SOUTH KOREA
15	MILAN	ITALY
16	BEIJING	CHINA
17	LONDON	UNITED KINGDOM
17	PARIS	FRANCE
19	TEL AVIV	ISRAEL
19	NAGOYA	JAPAN
21	SAO PAULO	BRAZIL
22	BERN	SWITZERLAND
23	NIAMEY	NIGER
24	SYDNEY	AUSTRALIA
25	SHANGHAI	CHINA
26	ROME	ITALY
27	NEW YORK	UNITED STATES
28	VIENNA	AUSTRIA
29	RIO DE JANEIRO	BRAZIL
30	ST. PETERSBURG	RUSSIA
31	HELSINKI	FINLAND
32	DAKAR	SENEGAL
33	BANGUI	CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
33	MELBOURNE	AUSTRALIA
35	AMSTERDAM	NETHERLANDS
36	BAKU	AZERBAIJAN
37	BRATISLAVA	SLOVAKIA
38	GUANGZHOU	CHINA
38	NOUMEA	NEW CALEDONIA
40	ATHENS	GREECE
40	DOUALA	CAMEROON
42	SHENZHEN	CHINA
42	DUBLIN	IRELAND
44	ISTANBUL	TURKEY
45	ABIDJAN	IVORY COAST
45	HAVANA	CUBA
47	PRAGUE	CZECH REPUBLIC
48	BRAZZAVILLE	CONGO
49	BARCELONA	SPAIN
50	FRANKFURT	GERMANY
50	ABU DHABI	UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Our Digital Legacy

Jack Dikian

July 2011

I was an early user of the Internet – only back in the dusty computer and physics labs of Sydney University the term Internet wasn’t yet invented. It was all about having UUCP access so that we can jump on the Usenet and look at newsgroups.

Newsgroups contained a great deal of content, albeit mostly of a technical nature and mostly text. Even from back then it occurred to me that much of what we were posting would have a presence, linger on servers distributed all over the world.

We are, after all, the first people in the history of the world to create vast online records of our lives. I say our lives because since the rise of the Internet (some 25 years) and more recent advent of social media (7 years) the internet has become seamlessly integrated with all our experiences, and more and more of our everyday life is being documented online.

For example, a quick look at Facebook’s stats tells us there are more than 750 million active users, 50% of them log on to Facebook in any given day and have 130 friends on average. Our lives, relationships, thoughts and opinions will surely fascinate future historians, sociologists, archaeologists and anthropologists studying the dawn of the digital age. The individual worth or contribution might be relatively small, but collectively, as a result of years of Internet activity, this becomes a significant.

At the same time people are beginning to think about their digital legacy. Those digital or virtual assets in the form of photographs, music, blogs, information, and other data that may be typically overlooked in terms of financial or monetary worth. Digital Legacy has been described as ‘the birth of a new industry' as new companies are being created to hold secure encrypted access to digital assets, to be released upon the proof of a users death.

In contrast to the legal, finical and officious aspects of digital legacy I’ve been wondering about what will happen to our Internet presence once we are gone. This is particularly true when we consider the rise of the phenomenon of social networking especially amongst the over 50’s is creating millions of personal archives.

So should someone notify our friends and followers on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other services after our death. Would we want somebody to remove our material from those services, or to leave it there as a memorial? More than a quarter of a million Facebook users will die this year alone.

Importantly, how long will our blogs, tweets and other material remain on the net if nobody removes them? History shows that even the most prominent technology companies can be rapidly overtaken by competitors or deserted by customers. It’s possible that some of our material might disappear along with the demise of our favorite platform. I grew up believing IBM would permeate our personal and professional lives for example.

Twitter

Whislt Twitter’s search only goes back a few days, every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, with the total numbering in the billions. So there is a very good chance our tweets will be archived for many many years.

Deflation Seen Also In Women's Shoes

Jack Dikian

July 2011

It seems that deflation isn’t just confined to flat screen TVs and computers. The graphic shows the decline of women’s shoes over the past decade or so. We have over the last few years seen many large organizations report price declines due to the strong Australian dollar, the challenging retail environment, and the impact of e-tailing. Shoes are no objection…

Future of the Universe

Jack Dikian

July 2011

We often wonder what the future would be like. Doris Day sang years ago, the future's not ours to see Que Sera, Sera. A good friend asked me only yesterday how I see the next five years. I wanted to think about the next Trillion years. After years of reading about the Big Bang theory, which as we know, purports to explain some of the earliest events in the universe - I wanted to shift my attention towards what might be the ultimate consequence this theory may hold about the fate of the universe in years to come.

Up to now

There is little consensus among physicists about the specific origins of the universe. According to the theory the universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state and that overtime time expanded causing the young universe to cool and form large scale structures.

The Big Bang Model rests on two theoretical pillars

The first key idea dates to the early 1900’s when Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity suggesting that gravity is no longer described by a gravitational field but rather it is a distortion of space and time itself.

The second idea is that matter in the universe is homogeneous and isotropic when averaged over very large scales - the Cosmological Principle. The cosmic microwave background radiation (the afterglow) has a temperature which is highly uniform over the entire sky supporting the notion that the gas which emitted this radiation was uniformly distributed.

The Future

Hundred Trillion Years in the Future - Provided the universe continues to expand (doesn’t re-collapse under its weight) then it is assumed the universe will gradually wither away. During this period (10,000 years to 100 trillion years after the Big Bang) most of the energy generated by the universe is in the form of stars burning hydrogen and other elements in their cores.

Hundred Trillion to Ten Trillion Trillion Trillion Years in the Future - By now, most of the mass that we can see is locked up in that have blown up and then collapsed into black holes and neutron stars, or have withered into white dwarfs.

At Trillion Trillion Trillion Trillion Trillion Trillion Trillion years after the Big Bang the only stellar-like objects remaining are black holes of widely disparate masses, which are actively evaporating during this era.

Later again, black holes have evaporated and only photons of colossal wavelength, neutrinos, electrons, and positrons remain. For all intents the universe as we know it has dissipated.

Traffic, Road Rage and People

Jack Dikian

July 2011

A casual chat with a close friend today about her experience on the road got us talking about road rage. I promised her that I would put together a few words looking at factors and psychology that might be contributing to this increasing behaviour.

Road Rage is increasingly becoming a concern on roads Australia wide. Almost a day doesn’t go by if we don’t witness or hear about road rage in the media. People feel rushed in an increasingly busy society. Other societal stresses such as work-life balance, economic and environmental factors are seen as factors impacting on the rise of road rage.

At the same time it is widely acknowledged that the majority of motor vehicle accident causes are human errors and maladaptive behavior, accounting alone or in interaction with other roadway circumstances for more than 90% of all traffic accidents.

Traffic psychology has largely followed an interdisciplinary approach and has shared common topics with areas such as driving aptitude, ergonomics and travel demand management as well as human factors in traffic planning.

The overall psychology and interplay of road users is complex and deals with a wide variety on relationships including demographics, modes of transport, road design and construction, traffic management, road condition variability and the role of people factors in mobility behavior. More specific factors associated with people’s behavior in relation to road may include:

Increasing driver task associated with high monitoring impact such as rapidly changing traffic conditions (multiple school zones, changing speed limits, and other traffic damping initiatives)

• Driver perception, cognition and expectations, particularly if a driver feels unduly inconvenienced or sees other road users to be in considerate.
• Driver's emotional state, workload, alertness and fatigue
• Driver personality, propensity for risk-taking, attitude, and motivation for certain behaviors and
• The driver’s capacity to adjust their behavior in response to perceived changes in risk

Cost of Carbon and Need To Know

Jack Dikian

July 2011

AUSTRALIA will have a carbon tax for three to five years before a full emissions trading scheme is introduced, under a blueprint for dealing with climate change agreed by a multi-party parliamentary committee.

Julia Gillard has unveiled the key principles of the government's climate policy today, saying a fixed price would be placed on carbon pollution from July 1 2012. She announced a carbon price of $23 per tonne to begin with rising at 2.5 per cent a year.

Related economics, politics and the myriad of expert opinion on both sides of the climate debate, we have heard and will continue to.

I want to make a few points, and perhaps, throw in a little analysis – the type one does on the back of a postcard.

• Counter intuitive as it is, mid to long term climate change is actually easier to predict than weather conditions for the short term. Chaos Theory doesn’t help.
• Mankind does contribute to atmospheric Carbon (mostly in the form of Carbon Dioxide CO2). In fact, since the industrial revolution, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased (approx.) from 280 ppm, to today’s concentration levels of about 380ppm. This is a very small increase, but an increase nevertheless. Remember, air is mostly Nitrogen and Oxygen.
• Whether an increase in CO2 levels associated with mankind is capable of generating marked impact on climate is still difficult to call.
• If Australians wish to reduce CO2 leaking into the atmosphere (note I’m not saying this will impact climate) then a price on Carbon WILL, overtime, reduce our contribution of atmospheric CO2 as correctly stated by our PM. Take for example two companies producing the same product. The company that is leaking more CO2 will have a greater production cost (because they will have to pay for carbon emission) and thus, its products will ultimately cost more than the company leaking less CO2. It is rightly assumed we (consumers) will purchase the cheaper of the two products.

Table 1 below presents 17 countries ranked by CO2 emissions and relative percentage of global total. Australia is sitting at 17th place behind Indonesia.

• It should be noted that our per capita contribution is extremely high. An average Australian produces approximately 5 tonnes of carbon emissions per year.
• Carbon and Carbon dioxide are often conflated when talking about greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon that is present in the fossil fuels combines with oxygen during combustion to produce CO2.
• How much is a tonne of Carbon? 1 tonne of CO2 (in gaseous state) is composed of Carbon and Oxygen. Carbon’s atomic mass is 12 and Oxygen’s is 16 so Carbon is about one third of the mass of CO2. One tonne of CO2
gives us 556.2m³ or about 4000 black balloons.

Table 1

China	23.33%
United States	18.11%
European Union	14.04%
India	5.78%
Russia	5.67%
Japan	4.01%
Germany	2.61%
Canada	1.80%
Iran	1.79%
United Kingdom	1.73%
South Korea	1.69%
Mexico	1.58%
Italy	1.48%
South Africa	1.45%
Saudi Arabia	1.44%
Indonesia	1.35%
Australia	1.32%