Loading summary
Transcript91 lines
- [00:00]
Sleep Number Salesperson
Why choose a Sleep number Smart bed.
- [00:02]
Sleep Number Customer
Can I make my site softer?
- [00:03]
Callum Williams
Can I make my site firmer?
- [00:05]
Shailesh Chitnas
Can we sleep cooler?
- [00:06]
Sleep Number Salesperson
Sleep number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side. Your sleep number setting J.D. power ranks sleep number number one in customer satisfaction with mattresses purchased in store and online. And now the more you buy, the more you save on beds, bases and more. Plus get free home delivery on most beds with base limited time. For J.D. power 2025 award information, visit jdpower.com awards check it out at the Speed Bumper store today.
- [00:32]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's Unlimited Wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [00:53]
Sleep Number Customer
Of $45 per three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes. If network's busy, taxes and fees extra. See Mintmobile do.
- [01:08]
Jason Palmer
The Economist.
- [01:15]
Economist Narrator
Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. In India, the bottom rung of the caste system is occupied by the Dal, once called Untouchables, who make up perhaps a quarter of the country. Our correspondent says their exceptionally rich cuisine is woefully overlooked and we take a ride on the River Thames with a bunch of other commuters. The number of people moving around by river taxi is breaking Victorian era records and it's even becoming a slightly more environmentally sound way to get around. First up though.
- [02:16]
Jason Palmer
I know what you're thinking, that overall the world economy did okay in 2025, especially given all those tariff driven recession fears. You're thinking labor markets are pretty healthy and stock market returns have been pretty good. But you know that average picture hides a lot of variation and that some countries have had a far better 2025 than others. If only there were a way you lament to rank which countries did best. Well, fear not. Our senior economics writer Callum Williams is here to help.
- [02:53]
Callum Williams
Our Economy of the Year ranking is composed of five different indicators. That's inflation, inflation breadth, GDP growth, employment growth, and share price growth. And what we do is we look at each of those indicators for as many different rich countries as we can find. And then we rank them all together and we combine the rankings for each indicator and so it produces a final score, and we use that to rank countries from best to worst.
- [03:19]
Jason Palmer
Inflation, I get. What's inflation breadth?
- [03:22]
Callum Williams
It's a bit more complicated. Inflation is an average measure. Inflation breadth is the share of goods and services in the inflation basket that are rising by more than 2% a year.
- [03:34]
Jason Palmer
Okay, so before we pick apart the different factors, let's just get right to the money shot here. What is the best performing economy of 2025?
- [03:46]
Callum Williams
It is Portugal, with Ireland very close behind. But Portugal is the winner.
- [03:50]
Jason Palmer
Okay, why?
- [03:52]
Callum Williams
A few reasons. Tourism's doing very well. You've had a lot of people moving there from abroad to take advantage of favorable tax regimes. The country also continues to bounce back from the pretty big recession that happened in 2008. Inflation's been kept under control. The stock market is doing pretty well. So it's been an overall very successful year for Portugal. What's interesting is that this is actually the fourth year running in our ranking where a country in Southern Europe has come top. So last year it was Spain. The two years before that it was Greece. So this is a very good period for Southern Europe after what was 15 years of very, very poor economic performance.
- [04:32]
Jason Palmer
Okay, so we've got the top out of the way. Let's talk about who's further down the league table. Who's had a bad 2025.
- [04:38]
Callum Williams
Okay, so right at the bottom we have Estonia, Finland and Slovakia. There's a few other countries that didn't do quite so well. Britain is towards the bottom, although not quite as bad as the Slovaks. Germany doesn't do very well, though it does do a bit better than it did last year. And then in the middle, there are some surprises. You might think that America would be quite high up the rankings. In fact, it's middle of the road. And ditto with Italy. Canada's the best performing G7 economy.
- [05:08]
Jason Palmer
Is there anything that ties together the countries that are towards the bottom?
- [05:12]
Callum Williams
Yes, I think if you had to isolate one factor, it would be the energy price shock of 2022. After Russia invaded Ukraine, energy prices went through the roof. And what you can see is that countries that were highly exposed to Russian gas and Russian gas prices, those were the ones that have done badly now for quite a few years. So Estonia and Finland were again towards the bottom of our ranking in previous years. British energy prices went sort of parabolic at one stage. So, yes, if I had to identify one factor, it would be that and.
- [05:45]
Jason Palmer
Coming to the factors individually, give us a picture that this study reveals on inflation.
- [05:50]
Callum Williams
So what we say in this exercise is the closer a country's inflation is to 2%, the better on that measure. Turkey does terribly. As anyone who follows Turkish news will know, inflation remains very high there. Although it has come down quite a lot in recent months. Estonia is still doing badly. I think this is in part to do with the energy price shock of 2022. But there are actually quite a few other countries that are quite a long way from having inflation under control. So Britain is one example there. Inflation is kind of edging back up and the same is true of America, partly to do with fiscal policy, perhaps, and partly to do with the effect of tariffs. After three years of inflation that was really high, it's reasonable to think that 0% inflation, which is what Sweden is kind of dealing with at the moment, is great because prices don't rise at all. So a lot of people would think that was a perfect outcome. The issue is, and this is where economists start to worry, is that when you have 0% inflation, you're very close to having negative inflation. And when you have negative inflation, that introduces all sorts of problems into an economy. So people start to hold back on spending because they think prices are going to come down. The real value of debt starts to go up, so that makes it more difficult to repaid debt. So you really don't want to have deflation. So actually, 0% inflation is not a great thing.
- [07:09]
Jason Palmer
And taking in other indicators, growth, jobs.
- [07:13]
Callum Williams
Well, growth has been pretty good in Ireland, been pretty good in Portugal, indeed, pretty good across Southern Europe. It's been pretty good in Greece as well. And then employment, we're a long way from the glory days of 2021 and early 2022, where there was this recovery from the pandemic and there was a very, very strong employment growth across the rich world. There are only still, though a few countries or really a handful of countries where, where employment is actually negative, where growth is negative. So on the labour market front, it's still pretty positive everywhere, frankly, unemployment is low and jobs are still being created.
- [07:46]
Jason Palmer
Is that to say that essentially you'd get the same ranking if you took those factors out of your equations?
- [07:51]
Callum Williams
I think that's probably right. There is a big difference between the job growth, say, of somewhere like Ireland, which did create quite a few jobs in 2025, and somewhere like South Korea, where job, job growth is negative. When you have negative job growth, then it can quite quickly spiral into a situation where the unemployment rate starts to rise quite sharply, people get nervous and start cutting back expenditure. So in a sense the differences may seem trivial, but when you're worried about tipping points and the possibility of recession, then it does become a little bit more important.
- [08:26]
Jason Palmer
And last one then, global stock markets. How was 2025 and who did well out of it?
- [08:31]
Callum Williams
Well, this was the most surprising one for me because the American stock market gets obviously a lot of attention, the most attention by far. It's had a good year. You might think it's had the best year of any country, but that is very far from the truth. There are many stock markets that have had a much better year than the American stock market. Israel stock market has done the best. There are some stock markets that have done really badly this year. The worst performer is the Denmark and that is at least partly due to the fact that the biggest company in Denmark, Novo Nordisk, which manufactures a lot of weight loss drugs, had an amazing 2023. But the share price has come right back down this year to really where it was before the whole Ozempic stuff began. So as a result it's dragged down the overall Danish index and presumably as.
- [09:20]
Jason Palmer
Occupier of top of the table, Portugal did pretty well too.
- [09:23]
Callum Williams
Yes, very. Respectively rose by more than 20%. And there's something interesting here. We went back and looked at what happened to the stock market of the country that we nominated, economy of the year in the following year and on average the stock market rises by about 20%. So we are not offering any investment recommendations but it's worth thinking about.
- [09:45]
Jason Palmer
So that is to say then that you reckon those close to the top of the table in 2025 have a good shot for 2026.
- [09:52]
Callum Williams
That definitely is the lesson of our exercise over five years so far.
- [09:56]
Jason Palmer
Thanks very much for your time, Callum.
- [09:58]
Callum Williams
Thanks for having me Jason.
- [10:10]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. One of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best kids gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's Unlimited Wireless for 15amonth. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [10:31]
Sleep Number Customer
Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra c mintmobile.com.
- [10:40]
Sleep Number Salesperson
Why choose a sleep number?
- [10:41]
Sleep Number Customer
Smart bed Can I make my site softer?
- [10:43]
Callum Williams
Can I make my site firmer?
- [10:45]
Shailesh Chitnas
Can we sleep cooler?
- [10:47]
Sleep Number Salesperson
Sleep Number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side. Your Sleep Number setting J JDP Power ranks sleep number number one in customer satisfaction with mattresses purchased in store and online. And now the more you buy, the more you save on beds, bases and more. Plus get free home delivery on most beds with base limited time. For J.D. power 2025 award information, visit J.D. power.com awards check it out at the Sleep Number store.
- [11:10]
Callum Williams
Today.
- [11:22]
Shailesh Chitnas
When most people think about Indian food, they think about butter, paneer, tikka, masala, naan, which are all tasty. But there's this whole other set of Indian cuisine that a lot of people may not have heard of, and this is called Dalit cuisine.
- [11:36]
Jason Palmer
Shailesh Chitnas is our global business writer.
- [11:40]
Shailesh Chitnas
Dalits, for those who may not know, are what was once considered, quote unquote, untouchables in India. These are the lower caste that were shunned from society and they essentially have a form of cooking that is very different. It uses ingredients in very different ways to come up with dishes that frankly, even most Indians may not know about. And it's quite tasty, in my opinion. I've eaten those dishes and so I would say it's probably one of Indian food's best kept secrets. A lot of these dishes are cooked in villages and the reason I mentioned villages, which is separate from cities, is in cities you'll have people with regular kitchens, gas stoves, things like that. Whereas in villages people do still tend to, in India cook on fire stoves, which would be outside or inside the house. And so what you're hearing is actually sounds of a kitchen that is in a village where this food is being prepared. A group of women sitting around a fire stove, they're chopping onions, vegetables with their hands and then they mix that frequently with either meat or vegetables. I was actually introduced to this particular genre of cooking by a book by this author called Shahu Patole. He wrote a book in Marathi, which is a local language in western India in sometime around 2014, where he started talking about this kind of food. And really it was the first time when somebody had actually put these dishes on paper. Now what is interesting is even after the book was published, it was not really very popular. Only when the book was translated from Marathi into English in 2020 did more Indians start to realize like there is something like this that exists. So I got in touch with Mr. Patole and a lot of what I'VE learned was based on my conversations with him. And he was really kind enough to actually take the time to go through his village to cook these dishes to show how it is prepared. Now, the dishes Mr. Patole cooked for us were quite interesting. There was blood pudding, there was mutton in intestine, there was roasted lung and wild green curry. And so the sounds that you hear are exactly how it is prepared. Traditionally, these villages would not have access to the best cuts of meat, for example, chicken or goat. And so what they had to do is they would resort to, for example, eating cow meat. Now, in India, that's a very sensitive topic because cow is considered very holy in certain sections of Hindu society. Now, this food is very different. And the reason that is so is because of the history. Certain upper caste Hindus felt that the Dalits touch was polluting. And that essentially created this whole culture of a hierarchical society wherein villages, Dalits and other lower castes were essentially staying outside the boundaries of the village. Their houses were outside, and even the food that they ate essentially was segregated from a lot of what the upper caste Hindus would eat. After independence, discrimination on the basis of caste was outlawed. But again, that's law versus in society, and that's not really kept pace. And Dalits constitute between a fifth and a quarter of India's 1.4 billion people. So this is not a small number of people we're talking about. This is a huge community. And their food has gone unnoticed until now. This cuisine evolved from scarcity, them not getting access to different resources. And so what would happen is anytime a farmer's cow would die, they would then look to people from these Dalit communities to take the carcass away and dispose it off for leather making or bones or whatever it is. And in the process, people in this community would then use the meat from the cow or the buffalo, whatever the case may be, to then cook their own food. That again, added to this feeling of segregation or their food being somehow lower or inferior to what upper caste Hindus may eat. So I had a very good conversation with Mr. Patole where we talked about this, and he explained some of the issues, not just in terms of the history, but even today that he faces when he goes out and talks about these dishes and what it represents and means to his community. Surprisingly, he said that people from his community were actually initially angry with him. And the reason for that was they pointed to him saying that you're actually drawing attention to a kind of cuisine that we don't want attention to be drawn to. People may look down upon us, which frankly he found quite surprising because in his opinion, this is what we eat and it should be celebrated, we should not be ashamed about it. So that was the first reaction. But gradually he also started to see a lot of the young people from his community wanted to connect with that food and wanted to learn more about it. He had an interesting story where he tried to talk about this in the early 90s by publishing some of these recipes with local Indian newspapers. And when he sent these recipes in where they would have a section for local recipes, they just politely decline and send it back saying we are unable to publish it. And so for almost 20 years, he didn't do anything about it. And then I think once he retired, he decided to actually just write a book himself. And while a lot of things have improved since independence and Even probably since 1990, food is still a very political issue in India, particularly meat. And a lot of it has to do with the rise of the bjp, which is the current ruling government, and their right wing agenda, as I would call it, where it's kind of a return to Hindu nationalism as they perceive it. And that is tied to this notion of vegetarianism. So being a good Hindu means you're a vegetarian and if you eat meat, particularly the quote unquote bad kind of meat, you're not a good Hindu. It's not just an armchair discussion. It has real repercussions to people on the ground in terms of what they can eat. And it's important to remember that per calorie in reality in India, cow meat or buffalo meat is the cheapest source of calories that you can find. And so when you're cutting off access to that, you're also cutting off access to important source of calories to a lot of section of people who cannot afford that. For me personally, it has been quite a journey to learn about this cuisine. And I'll tell you why. I grew up in India, I grew up all in many different cities in India, but I never knew about this cuisine. And so to me it was almost like little bit I felt a sense of shame where I just didn't know this entire strand of cuisine that was there. And so hopefully now more people can know about it, we can celebrate it, and we can bring it into regular Indian cuisine. If you go out to a restaurant, we should be able to have these meals as well. And so that's my hope is more people start to have a conversation around this.
- [18:19]
Economist Narrator
Foreign.
- [18:26]
Jerry Insurance Advertiser
You know, what's wild, most people are still overpaying for car Insurance just because it's a pain to switch. That's why there's Jerry. Jerry's the only app that compares rates from over 50 insurance in minutes and helps you switch fast. With no spam calls or hidden fees, drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Before you renew your car insurance policy, do yourself a favor, download the Jerry app or head to Jerry. AI Acast.
- [19:02]
Economist Narrator
All right.
- [19:02]
Jason Palmer
We are at Canary Wharf pier in central east ish London. I'm with Charlotte Kilpatrick. We are about to get on a Uber boat by Thames Clippers. We're going through the center of town on a boat.
- [19:14]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
On a boat.
- [19:22]
Economist Narrator
There's a bar.
- [19:23]
Jason Palmer
You could have a pastry, you could have a beer, you could have coffee, you could have a little bag of nuts.
- [19:29]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
How about a tea?
- [19:31]
Thames Clippers Safety Announcer
This is a safety announcement.
- [19:32]
Jason Palmer
Oh, good.
- [19:33]
Thames Clippers Safety Announcer
Please take a moment to read and familiarize yourself with the safety cards in the seat back pockets.
- [19:40]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
Back in the Tudor times, this river was really clogged. So Henry VIII stepped in and introduced fare journeys along the river and regulated who was allowed to operate the boats, which created the Guild of the Watermen. We are now going under the real London Bridge, which was the first bridge across the river. Fun fact. The reason that there were not more bridges built throughout the centuries is because of the. The watermen who operated on the river who lobbied together to make sure no bridges were built so they could stay in business. And then we had the underground trains and the commuter trains which got rid of the boats. And now the boats are coming back.
- [20:18]
Jason Palmer
So fell out of fashion because different modes of transport, but is now back on the up.
- [20:23]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
It is because as you can see, we are sitting here sipping our coffee and tea and enjoying the lovely view of the London eye. This is a. This is a much more enjoyable way to travel than being stuck in the tube, crowded along with lots of people on the Central Line. So the numbers are back up. In the mid 19th century, the steamboats carried 15,000 commuters per day. And now they are carrying similar numbers up and down the river. Since the pandemic in 2019, traffic has risen 23%. In 2024, the RiverBus service recorded 5.2 million journeys.
- [21:03]
Jason Palmer
River bus or Uberboat by Thames clippers.
- [21:06]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
Uber boat by Thames clippers.
- [21:08]
Jason Palmer
Tell me why it's called that.
- [21:11]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
So the way I heard it described is that Uber is the Uber partnership that they've had. So this is not run by Uber. This is just exposure for Uber so they can be seen as the Uber Transport company.
- [21:24]
Jason Palmer
Raw ugly advertising. Fine.
- [21:25]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
Exactly.
- [21:26]
Jason Palmer
So the crew we see here on the properly uber boat by Thames clippers are basically modern watermen.
- [21:35]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
They are indeed. Although I did ask before I got on if all of them are watermen and appears they are not. But there is still a waterman's guild built farther up the river in 1780 that operates to this day.
- [21:48]
Jason Palmer
So you could in principle still get a ride on little skiff kind of thing across the river from a. From a waterman who has a little medallion and the whole thing.
- [21:56]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
I don't know if he has a medallion, but I took a sightseeing boat with my daughter earlier last month and it was a waterman who was giving us the full history of the river, including the price of the first regulated fare voyage, which was 2 pence something to travel from London to Gravesend.
- [22:14]
Economist Narrator
That's the back of the boat for.
- [22:15]
Jason Palmer
Tower and you'll pick you not audio professionals on the clipper.
- [22:21]
Thames Clippers Safety Announcer
Exit at the back of the boat.
- [22:24]
Jason Palmer
It's nice, it's warm, we're drinking coffee and tea. But it comes at a certain cost.
- [22:28]
Jerry Insurance Advertiser
It does.
- [22:29]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
This same journey on the tube from Canary Wharf to embankment is £2.90. To travel that same distance on the boat is three times as much.
- [22:38]
Jason Palmer
So instead of the old school people powered as we can hear here, this is a big gnarly marine diesel engine powering us down the river it is.
- [22:47]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
But that might soon change. They are introducing a fully electric ferry to go between Rotherhithe and Canary Wharf. This is about a push to make the river go from blue to green.
- [22:57]
Jason Palmer
I guess the question is I don't use this as a commuter service in largest part because it's so expensive, the numbers might be going up. But is this really going to be rival the other ways to get around this city?
- [23:09]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
Probably not in the immediate future. As you mentioned, the price is a problem and also the timing. So it says it runs every 20 minutes. You can wait up to 30. But back in the Victorian days the boat ran every four minutes.
- [23:22]
Jason Palmer
But do you think we'll get there? Is there enough appetite, do you think, such that you could make the numbers work for frequent cheap journeys that are this pleasant?
- [23:32]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
Maybe not yet, but perhaps if people start taking the boat and see how nice it is that you can sit and drink coffee that might turn around.
- [23:40]
Sleep Number Salesperson
Tap out the far end.
- [23:46]
Charlotte Kilpatrick
There. Sorry, that happens sometimes.
- [24:00]
Economist Narrator
That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
- [24:18]
Sleep Number Salesperson
Why choose a sleep number? Smart bed.
- [24:20]
Sleep Number Customer
Can I make my sight softer?
- [24:22]
Callum Williams
Can I make my sight firmer?
- [24:23]
Shailesh Chitnas
Can we sleep cooler?
- [24:25]
Sleep Number Salesperson
Sleep Number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side. Your sleep number setting J.D. power ranks sleep number nine number one in customer satisfaction with mattresses purchased in store and online. And now the more you buy, the more you save on beds, bases and more. Plus, get free home delivery on most beds with bass limited time. For J.D. power 2025 award information, visit J.D. power.com awards check it out at the Sleep Numbers Store today.
- [24:51]
Thames Clippers Safety Announcer
Make your home smell as good as it looks with Pura 4, the smart fragrance diffuser that lets you control your scent from anywhere. Choose from hundreds of premium fragrances, schedule your favorites, and set the perfect mood for every moment. And right now, get yours free when you subscribe to 2 cents for 12 months. Don't wait. This limited time offer won't last. Try it risk free for 30 days now@pura.com.