Habitat loss is the biggest threat to biodiversity and endangered species on the planet. Clearing land for agriculture is the principal cause of habitat destruction. Most agricultural land is used for livestock, mainly sheep and cattle.
…in Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, Robert Sapolsky concludes a discussion of MFT with the claim that “…conservatives heavily value loyalty, authority, and sanctity.”
In 1994, young adults were more conservative and less liberal than old people. In 2014, it was just the opposite. What happened?
So what is the relationship between inequality, social mobility, and household income?
When people think about how they are “doing”, what is their reference point? Partly their earlier selves, partly people in their social network, and partly people they simply come in contact with at work and in the neighborhood. If they’re going to compare themselves with their parents, they adjust for age: how the parents were doing at their current age. Given that income and wealth peak later in life, the comparison isn’t really compelling until later in life.
“…a four-year old’s openness to a new toy predicts how open she’ll be as an adult to, say, the US forging new relations with Iran and Cuba.” — Robert Sapolsky (2017) Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
What I see here is that the two conservative groups have done rather well, despite their limited education. It makes sense to me that they believe most people can get ahead if they work hard - because, for the most part, that’s how it worked out for them. Is that “system justification”, or simply believing in the system upon the evidence of their own lives?
Locus of control is not just a belief in the head - it is a belief tendency that reflects reality and creates reality. Change the reality and the belief will shift - maybe not in lock-step but in time.
Self-serving bias: the tendency to take credit for desirable outcomes and blame factors outside one’s control for undesired outcome, e.g., attributing a job promotion to hard work but failure to get promoted to a bad boss. What accounts for this tendency? Here are four possibilities:
All that nose-touching, rubbing, and grooming comes with exchange of scents, suggesting that cats within a given colony develop a ‘colony odor’ that is maintained during these behaviors.
What constitutes “state-of-the-art” technology changes from year to year. If the new technology isn’t cheap, households, businesses, utilities, and governments investing in the new technology will not invest again as they wait for the initial investment to pay off. This is called a “lock-in” effect, “where choices made at critical junctures lock in future choices and development” (Johnson, 2001)
Unfortunately, cheaper drugs and administration would not come even close to paying for Sanders’ Medicare-for-all plan. That’s because the high cost of US healthcare is driven by over-testing, over-treatment, overpriced procedures, and overpaid doctors. Check it out:
Why is it is so much easier to commit fraud against Medicare than against private insurance companies? Partly because the Medicare billing system is easy to game (see, for instance, “upcoding” and “inflated risk scores”) and partly because Medicare doesn’t require preauthorization as a condition of payment…
But what about those high administrative costs? According to The Commonwealth Fund, the share of hospital costs devoted to administration is 25% in the US, compared to 20% in The Netherlands, 16% in England, and just 12% in Canada. That sounds pretty damning, but it’s important to remember that administrative costs are often unrelated to insurance matters or are dual-purpose.
We want the pharma wolf to be healthy - not fat and not lean. Robust enough to survive inevitable dips in revenue. So how much could the US cut drug prices without undermining ongoing innovation in the industry?
Most Americans support “Medicare-for-all”, at least when described very broadly as "a publicly financed, privately delivered system with all Americans enrolled and all medically necessary services covered." But would they support Bernie Sander’s Medicare-for-all plan if well-informed of its details? Let’s look at some of those details, starting with what would be covered and how costs would be controlled. This straight from Bernie's online description…
So, what is the Green New Deal? The Deal referred to in the survey is one championed by Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, available here. Some pertinent excerpts…
Survey respondents were shown a brief description of what is being called the “Green New Deal”, followed by the question, “How much do you support or oppose this idea?” Here’s the description…
But how is it that we are getting more energy consumption with fewer emissions? Type of fuel, for one: some fuels emit more than others. Speaking of which, charts!
So how is the world doing in decoupling CO2 emissions from economic growth and energy use? The beginnings of an answer in three charts….