Srini Narayanan

Technopreneur in Customer Engagement Automation and Analytics solutions. Interests in Tech and DIY Investing.Meliorist. Studied at NIT&ASU

[Sridhar Vembu @svembu]

The economic and demographic effects of corruption.

Cost of land in our urban areas is far higher than what our GDP per capita would dictate. The ratio of land value to per capita GDP is probably higher in India than anywhere else. As an example, land prices in Chennai or Bengaluru rival that of cities like New York which has a vastly higher per capita GDP.

The key reason?

First, vast sums of political corruption money is parked in real estate. This raises real estate prices and high real estate prices affect everything downstream.

Second, corruption in building approvals and the like - the famous DTCP - raises construction costs, on top of already higher real estate costs.

Third, corruption in private school regulatory compliance enforcement raises school fees.

Fourth, corruption in private hospital regulatory compliance enforcement raises health care costs.

Fifth, household goods need sales outlets and those pay higher rents due to high real estate prices and construction costs.

So housing, education, healthcare and household goods - all of these now cost higher.

As a direct consequence, the economic burden on the average person gets worse. Young people, facing all these costs, postpone marriage, and postpone children or have fewer children.

That directly affects our demographics.

While this issue exists in many parts of India, Tamil Nadu, being the most urbanized of the bigger states, is particularly hit hard.

So corruption is becoming an existential threat to our society.

If you worry about the super-low birth rate in Tamil Nadu, way below replacement, understand that corruption raising our cost of living is one of the major causes, not the only cause, but a big one in our context.

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

Core premise in the article is valid-that falling fertility rates will force the India to use productivity tools& automation to achieve higher GDP/capita.

However all predictions looking to future decades macro numbers will turn out so wrong . Here they are predicting Yr 2100

[Shankar Sharma @1shankarsharma]

@rab9604 Amit Bhartia, the best thinker I have seen in decades, and I co-author this piece, inverting the entire chest beating over the impending collapse of our fertility rate, hence, demo dividend.

We argue that Demographic Buyback is the RIGHT way to look at TFR collapse, and that's how we will reach Middle Income in 75 years. There is no other way.

We hit ~$50,000 National EPS by 2100... that's $50k per Capita GDP.

We narrow the gap with US and China. We probably turn in a fiscal surplus.

Read it. It's all there.

A Demographic Buyback increases the nation's EPS, and economy's Free Cash Flow, as we postulate.

So, far from a death sentence, a population collapse is the solution: just like it is for China & others.

Point is Not whether the forecast is right or not.

Point is: only countries with declining populations will prosper in the coming decades. This is beyond debate.

Read. Reflect. Rotate and Share.

Final note: anybody using this concept will need to attribute to us. Otherwise I shall shame them with the call " Gali Gali mien shor hai, £¢¥~ Idea Chor hai".

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

What a low life dravidiyan stock! Apparently, corruption makes a great economy! Nobel Laureates like Hayek and Milton Friedman must take a bow to this scholarship

[Gopinathan Vijayaraman @gopinathvijay91]

I have a feeling that TVK is going to run the TN economy to the ground sooner than we think.

They have no idea what curbing corruption does to the economy. They seem to think, like the mostly stupid middle class, that it is 'THE' evil.

I shall ask you a few simple questions. Why didn't Dr. Manmohan Singh, the ace economist who brought the current prosperity to the then extremely poor India, thru his outstanding economic policies, do much about curbing corruption? Why did he not go after it with a religious zeal similar to the one he had for improving the state of the economy? Why did he stop with things like RTI, e-Governance, Public Disclosure of Assets, Direct Benefit Transfer, and Special CBI Courts? And leave it largely in the hands of the people? Did he not know the importance of curbing corruption?

If you know the answers to these questions, you will understand your society and economics better, and look at things more sensibly.

-Swaminathan

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

Price Law - the square root of the number of people in a domain does 50% of the work.

Domains like movies, businesses, arts do not follow a bell curve for success

https://t.co/IkI7Xn1w7n

[Rajeev Mantri @RMantri]

1/ Owing to high barriers to entry, India’s lodging and hotels industry has become a cartel that raises prices at will and fleeces customers.

India’s luxury hotel average daily rate (ADR) in Mumbai and Delhi now rival those of New York and London. Absurdly enough, the financial press sometimes celebrates this as some triumph of Indian hospitality. It is nothing of the sort. High prices are the unmistakable stamp of a supply-constrained market in a low income country, which should actually have a very competitively priced and deep pool of lodging options. The hotel industry is a structural failure being hyped as a success.

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

If you crush a cockroach, you’re a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you’re a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria. - Nietzsche

[Karthik Balachandran @karthik2k2]

If Trisha didn't look this good, she would have been criticised a lot (more).

Morality has an aesthetic bias.

[Neil Borate @ActusDei]

Last week I was on a panel at IIM Mumbai. My fellow panellist, Nitin Rao, CEO of Incred Wealth, was asked why wealth managers are even needed in the age of AI.His answer was one line. It annoyed me. Then it didn't. 🧵

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

@Jasonphilip8 May you overcome your diseases and live long!

[D Prasanth Nair @DPrasanthNair]

Beautiful - Veena with Tabla
Ustad Zakir Hussain at his magical best with Veena Vidushi Jayanthi Kumaresh.
Have a great Monday

Rcvd from WA

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

@karthik2k2 Correct on disclosure. But His diagnosis came after 5 years of start of term, not before.

I have been paying for 25 years term insurance and recently diagnosed hypertension - i will disclose it and pay higher premium at the time of next payment but renewal time they dont ask

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

Always disclose smoker or not, any pre-existing conditions when taking Life insurance.

Having said that, in this case, his condition diagnosed after 5 years into term insurance not at the start of premium- whole purpose of taking a life insurance

[Karthik Balachandran @karthik2k2]

1. Hypertension is not a minor condition. If you have it, get treated

2. To claim "it didn't affect health" is illogical -lack of symptoms is not the same as "healthy"

3. Deliberately failing to disclose pre-existing diseases is cheating

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

Term plan is the only insurance plan to take from Life Insurance Companies. Investments do it through mutual funds or ETFs

[Technical Charts @Technicalchart1]

My father's colleague died in 2019.

Heart attack. 51 years old. Left behind a wife and two kids.

For 22 years he had paid ₹28,000/year into a LIC endowment plan. Never missed a single premium. Believed he was protecting his family.

His wife went to claim it.
She got ₹7.2 lakh.
₹7.2 lakh for 22 years of trust. For a family with no income. Two kids in college. A home loan still running.
₹7.2 lakh lasted 8-10 months.

A term insurance of the same cover would have cost ₹12,000/year. The payout would have been ₹1 crore.
Same family. Same tragedy. Completely different story.

He didn't fail his family. Nobody told him the difference between a term plan and an endowment plan.

That's the most expensive financial mistake you can make. Because you won't be there to fix it.

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

Good thread on super topups - I have ICICI Lombard super topup - quality of it will be known only when I break base plan sum insured (from HDFC Ergo)

[Aditya Shah @AdityaD_Shah]

🚨Super top-up Analyser Series-The reality of Super top-ups

Super top-ups are sold as cheap alternatives to a higher base sum insured

But many come with severe limitations on the treatment of diseases like cancer!

We analysed super top-ups from every company
🏦ICICI Lombard
🏦Star Health
🏦Niva Bupa
🏦Care Health and other insurers
Which one is good?
Which one is horrible?🤔🤔

A thread🧵of threads on various super tops and which one is the best?

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

@thekaipullai Compare this to Vembu brothers who capitalized Zoho with savings from skipping a few lunches- generating $500 profit organically w/o raising a penny of ext money. Real hallmark of a great entrepreneur is capital efficiency

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

Claude is ahead of the great prof in Data Science - Don E Knuth of Stanford

[Valeriy M., PhD, MBA, CQF @predict_addict]

The legendary Donald Knuth just witnessed something remarkable. 🔥🔥🔥

After 30 years, a problem he posed about Hamiltonian cycle decompositions in a 3-dimensional Cayley digraph has finally been cracked.

And the solver?

Not a PhD student.
Not a research group.
Not a math department.

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

It is unbelievable that within 2 years quality of text to video has reached this level of Gen AI

[Bearly AI @bearlyai]

After Hollywood’s strong reaction against the Brad Pitt vs. Tom Cruise fight…Seedance users have pivoted to Jackie Chan vs. Bruce Lee over a bottle of ketchup:

[Srini Narayanan @srinin38]

The single largest event that can bankrupt any person is a health emergency - get a good health coverage. Healthcare inflation will be 3X of food inflation so pick a good one

[Nikhil Jha @NIKHILLJHA]

🚨Checklist to buy health insurance

Health insurance is one of the most complex types of health insurance

What are the things to keep in mind while buying health insurance?

Here is a smart cheat sheet to follow to buy health insurance👇

[Peter H. Diamandis, MD @PeterDiamandis]

Our brains are hardwired for linear expectations. 30 linear steps get you across the room. 30 exponential steps take you 26 times around the planet. The gap between those two numbers is where disruption happens.

[Shane Parrish @shaneparrish]

26 Tiny Lessons from my conversation with @morganhousel

1. “Wealth is what you have minus what you want.”

2. "Money buys fewer bad days, not more great days."

3. “It's really good to have people in your life who you don't want to disappoint."

4. Luxury quickly becomes a necessity.

5. Saving money is buying freedom.

6. Excellence is the capacity to take pain.

7. Optimize for sleeping at night, not maximising a spreadsheet.

8. Contrast drives happiness, not absolute levels.

9. Nobody is paying attention to you. Stop trying to impress strangers.

10. “If I can be average for 50 years, I’ll end up in the top 3% of investors.”

11. “99% of Warren Buffett’s net worth was accumulated after his 65th birthday. That’s just how compounding works.”

12. “Every dollar you save is a step toward that independence.”

13. Remember there was a time when you wanted what you have now.

14. “Nothing is more damaging to your investing psychology than getting rich quick when you're young.”

15. Passive income is largely an illusion.

16. Your social network sets your expectations.

17. All the time you spend thinking about things you don’t control comes at the expense of things you do control.

18. Give your kids money when they need it—in their 30s—not when they're 75 after you die.

19. “Loyalty to people who deserve it is one of the most rewarding things in life."

20. “Independence is a spectrum. Even $100 in the bank beats zero.”

21. “Rich-people food looks better than it tastes. Poor-people food tastes better than it looks.”

22. “No generation handles their 20s with grace. That's why every older generation criticizes the young.”

23. Simple scales, fancy fails: “The simpler my finances, the higher the odds I can leave them alone for 50 years.”

24. “We underestimate the odds of bad things happening. If we didn't, we couldn't get out of bed.”

25. Very few people can beat the market.

26. The biggest financial mistake you'll make has nothing to do with money.

Listen and Learn!

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

Last time copper prices shot up, some enterprising chap decided to reopen an old copper mine in Yunnan.

First he had to get six people to shovel bat guano out of the mine shaft.

They get sick and three died: of a SARS-like virus.

Virologists rushed to investigate. It was the first case of such a virus infecting people directly from bats.

They found SARS-like viruses in 9 of samples of bat shit from the mine.

They took them a thousand miles north to a lab in Wuhan.

A few years later they defrosted one of the samples to sequence and study the virus.

The next year a pandemic began in the city.

Turned out the virus they had collected from the mine shaft was the closest relative at the time of the virus that caused the pandemic.

Copper prices are now rising again...