Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Standards of Living on Aug 20th, 2011
Here’s a weekend thought. Please answer for yourself the following two questions: (1) Do you think the world’s richest countries (roughly the OECD countries) can grow at a rate of 1% per year over the next century? (I mean real, per-capita, growth). Note that this is less than half of their growth rate during the […]
Posted in Environment, Standards of Living on Aug 6th, 2011
Here is an illustration of a company that is working to solve one of the world’s most important problems: indoor air pollution. Estimates place diseases due to indoor air pollution (mostly caused by cooking over open fires indoors) as the killer of over 1.5 million people per year. That makes indoor air pollution the 8th […]
Posted in Standards of Living on Jul 11th, 2011
Allow me to make the most charitable (read: pessimistic) observation about what has happened to the incomes of the “middle-class” since 1980. Since the propitious election of Ronald Reagan, a culture of rugged individualism and corporate greed have overwhelmed the country. An unfortunate byproduct of this revolution has been the enrichment of the gilded class […]
Posted in Standards of Living on May 2nd, 2011
The Erie Canal runs through what was formerly the Montezuma Marsh. It was once one of the largest freshwater marshes on the continent (12 miles by 8 miles) until it was drained in 1911. However, it was still intact when we decided to dig the Erie Canal through it about 100 years earlier. As we […]
Posted in Standards of Living on Apr 11th, 2011
From the comments of this post by Don Boudreaux: But comparing the present population with those hourly workers that benefited from the prosperous 60′s and 70′s in this country the current hourly labor force is much, much worse off. I’m in no mood to rehash the debate on Tyler Cowen’s Great Stagnation thesis, or to […]
Posted in Standards of Living on Mar 17th, 2011
I am always on the lookout for creative ways to demonstrate to my students just how remarkable the recent record of global economic growth has been, with the attendant improvement in per capita living standards. If you normalize per capita income in pre-biblical times to take a value of 1 (say, in 5000 B.C.) here […]
Posted in Entrepreneurs, Environment, Standards of Living on Jan 1st, 2011
I see this one quite regularly: Seems to make sense. But we are not “running out of” farms. Nor are we running out of food. For example, we grow three times as much grain today than we did 50 years ago … and do it in roughly the same amount of land. Here is Matt […]
Posted in Standards of Living on Dec 25th, 2010
WINTERCOW in 2010: Sorry to be reposting. But again I think the message is worth repeating, especially on this wonderful day. I don’t want you to feel down about it at all. If you would like to see the data from the remaining eleven days, start here. As children around the world open presents on […]
Posted in Standards of Living on Nov 12th, 2010
That this is a headline says volumes about how well off we are in the year 2010 as compared to the past: “Cruise passengers endured stench, cold food“
Posted in Health Care, Standards of Living, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Nov 2nd, 2010
Voting sucks. OK, now that I got that off my chest, here is today’s post. A bright student of mine was telling me why he believes as a normative matter that “we” should have health reform: The whole debate about health care centers around whether or not you consider health care to be a privilege […]