This post will the first of many addressing the second lever: reduce emissions of short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs). The main SLCPs are black carbon, methane, tropospheric ozone, and some hydrofluorocarbons.
Wealth does not measure the inherent value of an asset, only its market value at a particular point in time. Sources of wealth include real estate, stocks, bonds, bank deposits, pensions, and mutual funds. One's own home is the main source of wealth for the majority of Americans, except the most affluent.
Slowly but surely the US is catching on to the advantages of using nurse practitioners as independent primary care gatekeepers. A big factor in the gradual acceptance of this expanded role for nurse practitioners is the shortage of GPs, which has left millions of Americans without access to primary care providers.
In the US, the incentives are aligned to test more, treat more, and charge more. It's no surprise that, on average, the US spends almost twice as much on its healthcare system than other developed countries. And it's no surprise that our doctors are among the highest paid in the world.
When we're talking about exorbitant medical fees, we're talking mostly about doctors' fees. Physicians make way more in the US than other developed countries - about twice as much. What do other countries do to contain physician fees? Lots of things, including...
I don't equate prosperity with being rich, or even being above middle-class. I think of prosperity as owning a nice home in a nice neighborhood, with health insurance and a degree of financial security. Don't need a big house, don't need fancy.
Since developing human capital requires financial resources and the returns to skills and education are higher than ever, the children of low-income families are at a disadvantage. But it doesn't have to be so. We just have to make sure the building blocks of human capital are there for all income levels.
Who are the one percent? Technically, households with an adjusted gross income of at least $465,626. But who are those people? Many work in occupations that pay so well they have plenty of money available to get richer still through profitable investments. Many work in the following occupations...
The point of raising tax rates is to raise tax revenue. However, raise the rate too high and tax payers will change their behavior to lower their tax bill. So is there a sweet spot for taxing the top earners in this country, where we can get the most revenue for our rate? Here's what the IMF has to say...
In developed countries, inequality of income is driven largely by a wage disparity between the highly skilled and the less skilled. Social mobility is stymied by lack of skills. Why don't some people acquire the skills they need to move up the economic ladder? Why are some people stuck?
What fosters social mobility? That is, what helps individuals move up the economic ladder? Mostly job skills and connections. In developed countries, job skills matter more than ever. Economic opportunity beckons those with the right skill set.
When we're talking to ourselves (silently or aloud), we're engaging in a goal-directed behavior, such as trying to strengthen our resolve (yes, I can!) or remember something (broccoli). We’re still riding on a wave of feeling, because goals can't gain traction without emotion.
...many generations of Americans wanted to do better than their parents - especially when their parents struggled. For much of American history, our parents struggled. It's only been the last 50 or so years that most of us could take a breather. Is doing better than one's parents still the be all/end all of the American Dream? Should it be?
Housing is the biggest component of the Consumer Price Index and the hardest to spend less on in the near term, because costs like rent and mortgage are fixed (unlike food, where buying fewer prepackaged or fast-food meals can generate considerable savings). What people spend on housing pretty well reflects what they think they can afford over time. So how much has the cost of housing changed since 1999?
Lots of patterns to detect from these tables. In both 1999 and 2015, lower-income folk spent quite a bit more than their reported pretax income - evidence that pretax income is not a very good indicator of actual financial resources. In both years, households in the top two income quintiles had more earners, fewer seniors and were bigger than households in lower quintiles. It also appears that all income groups spent quite a bit more in 2015 than in 1999. So is life getting better overall for Americans? At this point, not enough data. Stay tuned.
But will the gains erode without additional mandates? I don't know. Sometimes you need to push to get the ball rolling, but do you need to continue pushing with the same force for the ball to accelerate? We're about to find out (or at least get some relevant data) from the US example, where the mandates are being emasculated.
Unfortunately, a rise of 3.5°C could very well be catastrophic for our planet long before we even hit the 3.5 degree mark or get to 2100. Better to keep warming within 1.5°C...
So what did this 'carbon budget' paper actually say? That various climate models have projected slightly more warming for slightly less cumulative CO2 than what the authors have seen in the real world, so there’s a teeny bit more wiggle room for achieving the goal of no more than 1.5° C warming this century, assuming very aggressive Green House Gas (GHG) mitigation efforts.
High crime clearance rates are associated with lower crime rates. Translation: more crimes solved, fewer crimes. While the causal pathways are complicated, deterrence appears to play a starring role. Basically, humans are less likely to transgress against the rules if they think they’ll be caught...
Looking at Philadelphia, it appears that homicides vary with clearance rates after a lag time. For instance, the Philadelphia Homicide Unit reported a 70% clearance rate in 2012 and the following year homicides went down 26%...