I’ve been thinking lately about how run this blog is made difficult by the fact that most of the Infographics emerging these days are of a political nature, either evidencing the enormity of the Obama debt or condemning the corporate world for its rape of the planet. Most of the rest of the infographics count tweets and Facebook likes. Here is a tool, developed at MIT, that does a real job — it helps economists figure out how to grow national economies. From the NYTimes article:
These diagrams are the early fruits of a new approach to the most important unsolved problem of the last century: how to make a rich country out of a poor one. Development economists have many theories about how the trick is done but few proven answers. A compelling solution would be useful closer to home, too: understanding the process of economic development would help us work out whether it matters that service jobs are replacing manufacturing ones or whether there is anything the government can and should do to stimulate new industries like biotechnology or green energy.
As the article states, these are the earliest versions of tools. What I would love to see is easy to control time progressions to look at the development of various industries within certain countries.
The NYTimes article: http://goo.gl/NghUD
The Infographic: http://goo.gl/HYKyv