The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Fun Facts, Methodology, You Can't Have it Both Ways, labor markets on Oct 23rd, 2011
Steve Malanga reports: Steve Malanga at the Manhattan Institute’s PublicSectorInc.org, Oct. 21: [T]he Bureau of Labor Statistics released 2010 rates of injury and illness in the American work force, and once again state and local government workers on average missed far more days from illness and injury per worker than workers in the private sector. [...]
Posted in Fun Facts, Standards of Living on Oct 22nd, 2011
This website tells us that the average American watches 4 hours of TV per day. That sounds high to me, so let’s cut that in half, to two hours per day. A few posts ago I mentioned how great the iPod economy was. Here is what I forgot to mention or try to quantify. My [...]
Posted in Central Planning, Fun Facts on Oct 19th, 2011
The Venture Capitalists in DC are predicting 500,000 Volts sold by the year 2015 (out of a total of 1 million). The WSJ reported that in July, a grand total of … 125 Volts were sold. Even then, GM only hoped to produce 10,000 last year and 60,000 this year, so we are told that [...]
Posted in Fun Facts on Oct 16th, 2011
Only 18% of the land in the US is considered arable. India: almost 49%.
Posted in Fun Facts on Sep 16th, 2011
A minimum wage worker in the U.S. working for an entire year would earn in wages alone 50% more than the average income of a “representative” world citizen.
Posted in Fun Facts on Sep 10th, 2011
The US has more area dedicated to lawns than it does to any single farm crop – about 50 thousand square miles. That’s about 32 million acres, or an amount of land roughly 38% of the size of all land managed by the National Park Service.
Posted in Fun Facts on Aug 28th, 2011
Automobile accidents are among the most serious causes of death in America today, though the hazards have been deceasing. For example, in 2008, there were 37,261 traffic fatalities in the U.S. With a population of roughly 310 million people, this means that in any given year one in nearly 10,000 people will die in an [...]
Posted in Fun Facts on Aug 27th, 2011
The minimum wage in Luxembourg is €1758 per month. This is about $2,500 US dollars per month. In other words, the minimum wage in Luxembourg amounts to an annual salary of $30,000. That must explain why they are the world leaders in this category.
Posted in Fun Facts on Aug 26th, 2011
The current unemployment rate in Spain is … 21%. In Norway? 3.4%
Posted in Fun Facts on Aug 16th, 2011
Last year at about this time I first heard a public service announcement claiming that 1 in 8 Americans were hungry. I protested at the time that this was an unrealistically large number. And no, that was not an attempt to disparage the poor or to lessen the potential severity of what poverty is like. [...]
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