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Category Archive for 'Standards of Living'

It is obviously extremely hard to pin down a solid figure for how many people are going to be displaced due to the challenges posed by a warming planet. But virtually every publication I have read on the challenges of global warming rank the issue of “climate refugees” as both a serious political and economic […]

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I suppose I can be accused of cherry-picking here, but I got to thinking today about how most problems in the past half-century have been dealt with to the extent that they have been dealt with successfully. Have they been the result of great policies and social solutions? Or have they been a result of […]

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Had to pick up a birthday present and card for one of the kids’ birthday parties this weekend. Used a self-service kiosk to checkout. On the way home, I fancied a quite cup of coffee. Ordered it via a kiosk. Then, headed to my gas station where I filled up my own gas. Finished up […]

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As you probably all know, social security is a transfer program, not a retirement program. Aside from eliminating the program entirely, which advocating for would have you removed from polite company, here are some things to consider about it. The system is in far better shape than Medicare. Medicare is the big elephant in the […]

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… I wished that people could stop for a moment to celebrate the life and contributions of people like Norman Borlaug. He is probably the greatest “farmer” of all-time, and arguably has done more good for humanity than the entire combination of leaders and rulers who have ever walked the face of this Earth. If […]

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Suppose World Total GDP, which now stands at apx. $70 trillion, grows at about only 2% per year (ignoring population for a moment). This means that over the next 100 years, GDP will double approximately three times (use the rule of 69.3!). If you think total growth will be 3%, not at all unlikely, it will […]

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How do you feel about the increasingly popular meme of “Rich People Problems” or “Rich Country Problems?” I tend to be sympathetic to the intention of the meme – that the things we complain about or worry about are extraordinarily trivial when compared to the problems of people-times that were not as well-off as we […]

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You might think the answer is easy, “Tax the owners of capital!” Of course, capital is highly mobile today, it will only be moreso in the future as better ways to identify and locate off-shore (or off-planet) will surely be discovered. You might say, “Tax the robots when they come in?” Remember your basic tax […]

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Just finished the thoroughly enjoyable A History of Pi by Petr Beckmann. It is over 40 years old but has aged well. It’s more than just a math book: Then there is Roman engineering: the Roman roads, aqueducts, the Colosseum. Warfare, alas, has always been beneficial to engineering. Yet there are unmistakable trends in the engineering of […]

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Sunday Ponderance

What the technological singularity implies for “how do the millions of people who do not own the machine” manage to eat?

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