We have to go beyond categorical, either/or thinking to solve the problem of agriculture and the environment. It’s not about organic versus conventional. It’s about how to grow more food on less land while reducing environmental harm. So that soils remain healthy, more land reverts to wild habitat, and the rest of the biosphere isn’t poisoned by pesticides and fertilizer run-off (including manure).
These are 30 TV series or mini-series that were rated over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes by both critics and audience:
Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, the Shetland Islands, Ireland, the bucolic English countryside…Wouldn’t it be great to visit these places and partake of their wonders and exotic allure? And we can! Maybe not in person, but on our devices of choice. I’m not talking travel shows but deeply satisfying, immersive thrillers and crime dramas - the high quality type, with believable characters, plausible plots, and fully-realized worlds that suck you in, even those with subtitles.
Whatever keeps people from completing high school and getting at least some practical post-secondary education or training is keeping them from moving up the socioeconomic ladder. Could be substance abuse, cognitive/learning issues, poor English skills, impulsive temperament, emotional dysfunction, family dysfunction, peer influence, and/or neighborhood effects. To name a few possibilities.
But causation is not destiny. Motivations and behaviors change in response to real-life outcomes and opportunities.
Yes, a large majority of people under 60 who have been infected with the coronavirus have only mild symptoms. And I guess if someone is only concerned about their own health, that's enough to be cavalier about the possibility of getting sick. But higher risk individuals can get seriously ill and, given how contagious the coronavirus appears to be, the more people who get sick with mild symptoms, the more people who will get seriously sick in the general population.
As the above excerpt illustrates, status is about access to scarce resources in competitive situations. Higher status means greater access….Of course, one doesn’t want to be too obvious about one’s status aspirations - that reeks of desperation, which is a low-status emotion. Then again, once a person takes their high status for granted, it ceases to be sought or protected so strenuously. Ah, what a pleasant way to live: comfortable, confident and secure.
Obviously there’s no one-to-one association between GDP and CO2 emissions. Other factors come into play, like the particular fuel mix used to generate electricity in a given locale. Speaking of which, look at France…
To quote The Economist, the new American socialist “is not a cuddly Scandinavian social democrat who would let companies do their thing and then tax them to build a better world. Instead, he believes American capitalism is rapacious and needs to be radically weakened.” But what’s wrong with opting for the cuddly way of market-friendly welfare states?…Of course, the socialists have an answer.
“Around the world, forests are shrinking due to deforestation, urban development and climate change, but in Europe that trend has been reversed. …Large areas of the continent have seen a forest boom that means today more than two-fifths of Europe is tree-covered. Between 1990 and 2015, the area covered by forests and woodlands increased by 90,000 square kilometres - an area roughly the size of Portugal.”
— Europe bucks global deforestation trend, Johnny Wood/World Economic Forum July 25, 2019
A few years ago, social scientists Tom Hirschl and Mark Rank analyzed individual income trends in the US population and found that most American workers moved up the socioeconomic ladder as they got older. Based on their findings, Hirschl and Rank estimated that by age 60, almost 70 percent of the working population would experience at least one year in the top 20 percent of US income distribution and about half would spend a total of at least four years there. Wow – that’s a lot of social mobility…Who are these people?
I live in the heart of Progressive America, where the populace has become unhinged at the prospect of another four years of the Trump administration. Just yesterday, a friend described the President as “an existential threat to the US”. And earlier this month a neighbor’s mass email ended on this cheerful note: “If we don't change our leaders and enact progressive policies, we are doomed.”
To which I say: People, get a grip!
Earnings tend to increase with age. Thus, full-time workers at the top of the earnings distribution for any given education level will be mostly middle-aged or older. Of course, education level is only part of the story of what we earn over time: occupation, skills, work behaviors, ambition, and luck matter too.
Hmmm, sounds like CEOs are being paid too much and American workers are being paid way too little. But before jumping to conclusions, let’s do a little digging. For example, what is actually meant by “median worker pay”? To its credit, the Sanders campaign site provides a link to the source of the claim re S&P 500 CEOs: the AFL-CIO.
Two observations: 1) California’s top income tax rate (combined federal, state and local) is quite Nordic; and 2) in the Nordic countries, the top rate applies to the high end of middle-class incomes. In other words…
Note that every developed country with a universal healthcare system requires out-of-pocket spending, such as co-pays. And most of these systems have gatekeepers, such as primary care physicians, who control access to medical specialists. Consider the Scandinavian countries:
We resort to the brute force of willpower when when we have failed to avoid exposure to temptations. Willpower often works in these situations, but it can be exhausting. Willpower works best when used sparingly…Better smart self-control than hard self-control.
Note that individual income tax revenue was below 8% of GDP during the 1950s and early 1960s, when the top marginal income tax rate was over 90%. The top income tax rate has stayed within the narrow range of 35-39.6% since 1987 and yet over the same period income tax revenues have gyrated from 6-10% of GDP. Now for the real shocker:
The following stats are care of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), part of the U.S. Department of Justice. First, data on time served in state prisons, based on prison release records for 2016 from 44 states…So, how are US prisoners doing upon release? Turns out, not so good. This from a BJS nine-year follow-up study of state prisoners…
That’s almost 30% more beef produced per cow since 1961. And yet the amount of land devoted to livestock pasture has been declining for the past twenty years…How did we do it?
Here’s how the Niskanen Center describes their approach to policy-making: “We are globalists who share progressives’ desire to robustly address economic and social inequality, liberals’ commitment to toleration and civil liberties, moderates’ embrace of empiricism rather than dogma, conservatives’ belief in the wealth creating power of free markets, and libertarians’ skepticism about the ability of technocratic elites to solve complex economic and social problems.”