The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted that the U.S. is a low-tax country in an article on US taxes published yesterday. According to their chart, among the OCED countries, only South Korea has a lower total government receipts as a percentage of GDP than the U.S.
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Source: Top 10 Federal Tax Charts by Chuck Marr, CBPP
World War I was supposed to the “War to End all Wars“. However many years later World War II followed. The death toll in WW II was enormous with millions of lives lost on the allies side and the enemies side. After WW II new smaller wars led to more deaths.
I came across a fascinating chart today that showed the death toll for each country in WWII. Unlike so many other charts on the web, this chart puts the toll in perspective since it measures the casualties as percentage of each country’s than total population. Based on this logic, the countries with the largest death toll were Poland, Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
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Caption: Baumermann 3509 Tote im Zweiten Weltkrieg 2. Weltkrieg WK2 Bevölkerung Titel
Datum: 24. August 2009
World War II Casualties
Death toll as a percentage of each country’s 1939 population*
Source: The Road to World War II: How Appeasement Failed to Stop Hitler, Der Spiegel
At 0.30%, the U.S. had the lowest death toll percentage as a percentage of total population at that time. This does not mean American sacrifices were small compared to other countries. In fact, 450,000 Americans lost their lives and the US was the main driving force among the western allies. In addition, millions of American soldiers were injured and suffered as well. The sheer US military power and technological superiority helped European countries and the world put an end to the senseless war.
Updates (1/5/25):
1.World War 2 Deaths to a Country Population Percentage:
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Source: Unknown
2.Fraction of a Country’s Population to deaths in WW2:
Source: Wikipedia
3.World War II Deaths by Country:
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4.World War II Deaths by Country in Pie Chart Format:
5.World War II Deaths by Country in Bar Chart:
Source: Wikimedia
6.Human Losses of World War Two by Country:
Source: Wikipedia
7.World War II Military Deaths:
Source: StrangeMilitary.com
8.World War 2 Deaths by Country in Map:
Source: Pinterest
9.World War 2 Deaths by Percentage of Pre-war Population of each Country:
Source: Pinterest
10.World War 2 Deaths by Country in World Map:
Source: TargetMap
11. World War II Fatalities by Country:
Source: Historical Non-Fiction
12. World War 2 Deaths by Country and Percentage of Population:
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Source: The Causes and Consequences of World War II, WSWS
An excerpt from the above article:
The human cost of World War II exceeded by far that of the First World War. Military deaths totaled twenty-two to twenty-five million, including the deaths of five million prisoners of war. Let us examine the death tolls suffered by a number of countries most directly involved in the maelstrom. Poland lost more than 16 percent of its population. The Soviet Union lost approximately 14 percent. Eleven percent of the population of Greece was killed. Other countries that lost at least 10 percent of their populations were Lithuania and Latvia. Other countries that lost at least 3 percent of their people were Estonia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, Singapore and Yugoslavia.
13.World War II military deaths in Europe by theater and by year
Source: Wikipedia
14. Military Losses in American Wars:
Source: BattleFields.org
15.World War I vs. World War II – Civilian and Military Deaths Comparison:
Source: Google Images
16.Civilian and Military Deaths in Allied Countries:
Source: Foot Steps of War
17.Estimated number of military and civilian fatalities due to the Second World War per country or region between 1939 and 1945:
Source: Statista
For the full chart click on the link above.
18. The Number of Deaths in the Second World War by Nation:
Source: Statistics and Data
19.Death Toll by Year -Wars, Atrocities and Massacres of 20th Century – Chart:
Source: Tom White
A few years ago I wrote a article on the Gold and Silver supercycles.In that post I noted how these two commodities go thru boom and bust cycles in varying periods all the ways from late 1800s.
Recently I came across an chart on the commodity supercycle. As most commodities have declined sharply in the past few years it is worth taking a look at this chart.
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Source: The Global Investment Outlook, RBC Global Asset Management
The authors of this RBC report note that commodity prices shot up very high during the boom years and now they have declined heavily during the downturn. Just like during the boom times they have overshot on the downside.Oil prices have stabilized and recovered strongly in the past few weeks. But it remains to be seem if the recovery can hold. According to the authors most commodity prices may remain low for some time.
The S&P 500 is up by 1.80% year-to-date. Oil prices have recovered strongly from the recent plunge. In fact, Brent crude closed at $43.10 yesterday after falling below $30 per barrel in January. When it went below $30, experts were predicting $20 or even $10 per barrel. Now that it is over $40 not surprisingly they have become quiet. They may reappear in the media when oil prices $60 some in the future calling for prices to reach $100 soon.
From the beginning of the year until recently oil prices and the stock markets went up and down in tandem. It appeared stock prices were only determined on the price of oil movements. Some experts even starting monitoring the price of oil every day to make their decisions on equities. Though oil and all stocks seemed to be joined at the hip, in reality volatility in oil prices impacting the entire equity market did not make sense.
In general, what is the long-term relationship between oil and stocks? Long-term relationship is important to review as opposed to the short-term since most investors are not investing in equities for 1 month, 3 months, 1 year or even 5 years. So daily oil price movements does not matter to investors who have a long-term focus where it is building a retirement nest egg or saving for college tuition or simply building wealth.
I written before that oil is one of the most volatile commodities in the market. So worrying too much about oil and its impacts on equities day in and day out is not wise.
In an article published this week, Ken Fisher, Founder and Chief Executive of Fisher Investments noted that the long-term relationship between oil and stocks is meaningless. From the article:
MEANINGLESS
Figure 1 (below, click to enlarge) shows monthly returns for both US stocks and oil. The correlation co-efficient is a number between +1 and -1 that shows how much two variables move together.
The higher the number, the more positively correlated they are – zigging together at the same time and to the same degree.
A number close to -1 means they’re negatively correlated – they zigzag the way the myth presumes oil and stocks do. A number close to zero means the two have no relation – one zigs and the other broccolis.
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Since 1980, the correlation between oil and US stocks is 0.03. Meaningless – the two aren’t related in the long term at all (by the way, you can do the same thing with oil and UK, German, Japanese, and world stocks, and get the same meaningful lack of correlation).
Now look at the R-squared, which tells us how much of one variable’s movement can be explained by the other. Here, it’s 0 per cent. Said another way, over long periods, anything and everything but oil contributes to the stock market’s movement.
Can oil prices impact certain industries and firms more directly? Sure! Energy firms for a start, particularly if they’re drilling, refining, and/or selling oil or oil products. But overall, oil and stocks aren’t correlated – positively or negatively.
That’s longer term. Over shorter periods, oil and stocks can have short spurts of intense positive or negative correlation. But any two bizarre variables can inexplicably move together (or oppositely) for short spurts. It means nothing.
Source: Oil and stocks seesaw: Fisher’s financial mythbusters, Ken Fisher, Money Observer, April 15, 2016
Oil prices do impact directly firms operating in that particular industry such as producers, refiners, marketers, pipeline operators, equipment providers, etc. But the impact on other industries is indirect and some are affected more than others. In fact, some industries benefit from lower prices and vice versa. So investors are better off to consider many of the other factor that impact stock prices and not purely zoom in on oil price movements to make their long-term investments.
Executive compensation is out of control globally. Since most of the stock in major corporations are owned by institutions the majority of them support exorbitant pay structures for the management for fear of antagonizing them and potentially lose their business. As a result, many corporations have become the tiny little piggy bank for executives to extract as much wealth as possible during their term in one firm and then move on to another to repeat this process.
A recent research report by index provider MSCI showed that high intracorporate pay gaps leads to lower profit margins. In other words, if the pay gap between the highly paid executives and lower-level workers is high then the company producer lower profits. Lower profit margin eventually lead to lower investment return for shareholders as stock prices move based on the fundamentals of a firm.
From a news report on the MSCI report:
Research by MSCI into pay gaps between executive and rank-and-file workers in companies suggests that those with narrower differences produce better investment returns.
In its report – Income Inequality and the Intracorporate Pay Gap – MSCI notes that immediate performance objectives, such as maintaining dividends, share buybacks and quarterly earnings lead to short-termism, in which labour is reduced to a cost issue to be minimised, rather than be seen as an asset to create long-term value.
For investors, the evidence suggests that the issue could become increasingly important when determining which companies in which to invest; for example, income inequality is estimated to have increased in 63% of countries globally between 1980 to the current decade.
MSCI cites other evidence too, such as higher average profit margins for companies with lower intracorporate pay gaps in the 2009-2014 period, across all sectors except materials.
It said labour productivity was lower for companies with higher intracorporate gaps over the period.
Source: Pay gaps reveal which companies to invest in, Investment Europe, April 7, 2016
Here are the key findings from the MSCI research report:
We observed a relationship between the intracorporate pay gap (the gap between highest paid executives and average worker salary) and country income inequality during the period between 2009 and 2014.
Comparable to economic research cited in this paper suggesting country income inequality tends to slow GDP growth across countries, we observed that between 2009 and 2014 average profit margins were higher for companies with lower intracorporate pay gaps across all sectors except Materials.
We estimate that the Consumer Staples sector had the highest intracorporate pay gap globally; in the US the highest gap was seen in the Consumer Discretionary sector. Both sectors are likely to be highly impacted by movements advocating for adjustments to minimum wages in certain countries.
Labor productivity, measured by sales per employee, was lower for companies with higher intracorporate pay gaps on average during the study period, a finding we noted in nine of ten GICS sectors.
Source:INCOME INEQUALITY AND THE INTRACORPORATE PAY GAP by Samuel Block, April 2016, MSCI
Implications for investors:
In summary, high compensation for executives can be justified when a firm makes huge profits and shareholders and employees benefit from the success. However if ordinary workers and investors are soaked dry when those running the firms make out like bandits then it must be condemned. Since no regulations exist to prevent excessive compensation to insiders and retail investors do not have the power to change management, the only thing retail investors can do is avoid such companies by not investing in them.
