BMW 3-Series in India

On a previous post, I mentioned that U.S. exports to Inida have about quadrupled in the last 3 years as a result of the booming Indian economy, which is growing at 8-9% per year. As another indication of India's growing buying power, BMW will start selling its 3-series model cars here later this month, produced in a new BMW plant in Chennai. In May, the BMW 5-series will be produced in Chennai as well.

Read the story here.

Carpe Diem Stats

1. According to the most recent monthly Gongol.com traffic rankings for major business and economics websites and blogs, Carpe Diem ranks #64 by average daily visits (141) and #66 for average daily pageviews (207).

2. Total cumulative visits to Carpe Diem since its start last September just went over 20,000 today, see the Sitemeter, just below the Archives on the right hand side.

3. Daily visits today to Carpe Diem was high (226 through 10 p.m.) due to links to my blog from the Adam Smith Institute blog, and the Club for Growth blog.

Carpe Diem from Bangalore!

Age and Sex Tax Discrimination in India

Personal income tax rates in Inida ranges from 10% to 30% with the following interesting personal exemptions, by sex and age:

Men 110,000 rupees (about $2,500)

Women 145,000 rupees (about $3,300)

Senior Citizens 195,000 rupees (about $4,300)

Like being able to use the women's tees for golf, I guess there would also be a tax advantage for a man having a sex change operation in India! Carpe Diem from Bangalore!

Good News, Bad News for U.S. Housing Market

There was good news and bad news for the housing market in January. Sales of existing homes rose to an annual rate of 6.46 million in January, the highest level for seven months. But after increasing in December, the median price of an existing home fell by nearly 5%, to $210,600.

Separate data for the smaller market in new homes showed that sales plunged in January by 16.6%, to an annual rate of 937,000—the biggest drop in 13 years.

From The Economist.

What Does Economic Freedom Look Like at Night?

What does economic freedom look like at night from a NASA satellite?

See the fascinating NASA Earth night photograph from Aug 27, 2001 (click to enlarge). In Europe, it's easy to spot London, Paris, Stockholm, Madrid and Vienna. Check out Israel compared to the rest of the Arab countries. Note the Nile River and the rest of the "Dark Continent." After the Nile, the lights don't come on again until Johannesburg. From Strange Cosmos, via Tom McMahon.

According to the 2007 Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom of the World in Five Regions, the economic freedom of Sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest in the world, and the economic freedom of Europe is the second highest in the world, just slightly behind the Americas.

It's All Relative

Michigan has the second highest unemployment in the U.S. at 7.1%, ahead of only Mississippi at 7.5%. However, it could be worse - there are 100 countries with unemployment rates at 10% or higher, about ten countries at 50% or higher, and 125 countries with a higher unemployment rate than Michigan. See the full ranked list here.

(Note: Michigan's jobless rate is for December 2006, and the country rankings are for 2005).

"In regione caecorum rex est luscus." (In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.)

Iceland Joins Flat Tax Club

Iceland recently passed a flat tax rate of 22.75% for personal income at the federal level and 13% at the local level, for a combined flat tax rate of 36%, higher than flat tax rates in other countries (see chart above), but much lower than the previous marginal tax rate of almost 50% for high income earners. At the same time, corporate income tax rates were lowered in Iceland to a flat rate of 18%, down from rates as high as 50% in the late 1980s. As the Laffer Curve predicts, the lower corporate tax rates actually significantly raised corporate tax revenues collected by a factor of almost 2X, as a percentage of GDP (see graph above).

The move to a flat tax in Iceland is significant because it is the first advanced, Western economy to adopt a flat tax.

Iceland also now has the world's lowest unemployment rate for advanced economies at 2.1%.

Read more here from Cato Institute economist Dan Mitchell.