Friday's Top 10: Living richer, fatter, unhappier and shorter lives; The surprising place where house prices are the highest; 'Economics is all about babies'; Beneath the One Plan stoush; Clarke and Dawe; Dilbert

Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 1 pm today.

As always, we welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.

See all previous Top 10s here.

My must read today is #4 about the power of demographics. All powerful, I reckon.

1. Gross Domestic Happiness? - Radio NZ reports on how a new generation are likely to be the first to live shorter lives than their parents. 

Our economy is growing, which is the plan.

But are we targeting the right things?

What about gross domestic happiness? That takes into account how relaxed, satisfied, healthy and long-living people are.

It would certainly be more reflective over the longer term of how productive and useful all this economic activity is.

The GDP targeting focus has focused us all on the short term, the extractive and the consumptive. 

It's great to see our Treasury looking (albeit in a limited way) at other measures of progress.

One third of New Zealand children are inactive and one third of them are overweight or obese - problems that health academics warn are out of control.

More children are trading in their football boots and outdoor playtime for PlayStation, television and computer games.

Grant Schofield, a professor of public health at Auckland University of Technology, says children are now living a lifestyle that makes them unhealthy, less active and a lot fatter. That leads to health complications and not only cuts life expectancy, but also the chance at a good quality of life.

"When you create an environment where you can sit round the whole day and there's food everywhere, then you end up fat and with the complications of that.

"And we'll be done with that soon - all the adults - we'll get old and die. But we leave that world to our kids and I think that's the thing for most New Zealand adults to ponder is, what sort of world do you want to leave for your children."

2. The priciest houses on the planet - No, we're not talking about Auckland. Quartz looks at Chinese house prices. For some reason Auckland is omitted from the chart. Wellington features! 

3. 'An iron fist and a velvet glove' - Jon Morgan at Stuff has a nice piece here on nitrate leaching in New Zealand and the stoush over One Plan. 

What should happen next is that the council, Federated Farmers and the dairy industry combine their efforts to help farmers who will struggle to meet the One Plan's rules. So far, all we've had is a lot of heat and very little light.

Intemperate statements from the Feds and others have engendered a rising panic among dairy farmers and drowned out the voices of reason from the council and its advisers. Significantly, Fonterra, which fought the One Plan through the Environment Court and drew stiff criticism from the judge, has welcomed the council's interpretation of the rules as realistic.

4. It's all about the babies - Allister Heath writes at The Telegraph that demographics matter an awful lot. I agree.  I was surprised by how strong Britain's birth rate is.

Over time, babies matter far more to an economy than even the cleverest of central bankers. The wealth of nations is determined by how many workers they host, and how productive their citizens are.

The extent of Britain’s resurgent birth rate is as stunning as it has been overlooked. A remarkable 729,400 babies were born in England and Wales in the year to June 2012, the most for 40 years, according to the Office for National Statistics. Combined with an elderly population that is living longer, the gap between births and deaths is rising, and this, rather than net immigration, is what is driving the majority of the UK’s population increase (though many of the babies born are to migrant parents).

In 2003, the difference between the number of people who were born and those who died was just 77,000; last year, it had reached 239,100.

Britain is undergoing a demographic explosion; even with tighter rules on non-EU immigration, our population is rocketing.

5. Where is the oil? - The surprising strength of the oil price despite all this miracle shale oil is remarkable.

The FT reports one reason is falling exports from Russia to Europe. Some of it is going to China.

6. Freely tradeable? - The FT reports China is planning a massive acceleration of its plan to free up trading in the renminbi and remove its capital controls to reform its infrastructure and exporting dominated economy.

Two foreign participants at the March conference, jointly organised by the International Monetary Fund and the People’s Bank of China, said they were taken aback at how enthusiastic Chinese officials were in pursuing capital account opening. The advisers, including from the IMF, expressed concern that the reforms could endanger China’s financial system if introduced too rapidly.

“Premature capital account liberalisation risks accidents and crisis. Therefore China will be served well by continuing its careful approach,” Markus Rodlauer, deputy director of the IMF’s Asia department, said at the conference. “At the same time, liberalisation must continue, and China’s ultimate goal to make the renminbi fully convertible is well placed.”

Analysts have warned that a deregulation of domestic interest rates and the implementation of a free-floating exchange rate are important precursors to a full liberalisation of the capital account.

7. Maybe the Chinese have got it right? - Here's a TED talk from Eric X Li suggesting democracy isn't as wonderful as we all think it is.

It's a standard assumption in the West: As a society progresses, it eventually becomes a capitalist, multi-party democracy. Right? Eric X. Li, a Chinese investor and political scientist, begs to differ. In this provocative, boundary-pushing talk, he asks his audience to consider that there's more than one way to run a successful modern nation. A venture capitalist and political scientist, Eric X Li argues that the universality claim of Western democratic systems is going to be "morally challenged" by China.

8. How not to engender confidence in your statistics - Bloomberg reports China has just gutted its data release on factory output with little notice or explanation. 

The disappearance of data on industries including steel adds to issues hampering analysis of the world’s second-biggest economy, after fake invoices inflated trade numbers this year. The manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index also omitted readings on export orders, imports and inventories without any explanation from the government.

“Suspension of the monthly data, without prior notice, makes the research work difficult for us,” Xu Xiangchun, a steel researcher and chief analyst at Mysteel.com, said by phone from Beijing. “The random absence of official data is disorienting.”

9.  The Emerging Markets slowdown - Reuters reports HSBC's survey of emerging market factory output shows the slowest expansion in four years. China is the main culprit. 

10. Totally Clarke and Dawe on standing for the new Prime Minister of Australia. Hallezlujah.

(Updated with cartoon)