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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (553648)	3/11/2010 12:02:29 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571873

“Growth, at least as we now create it, is producing more inequality than prosperity” Inequality and prosperity simple aren't things that can be measured on the same scale. Its like saying more love than coal. In any case prosperity has been increasing over time, and by enough that even with an increase in inequality, most, including most of the poor, have done as well or better. So its pretty odd to say "more inequality than prosperity" Money consistently buys happiness right up to about $10,000 per capita income, and then after that point the correlation disappears. Reported happiness isn't higher in the very wealthy countries than the in the middle to slightly rich countries, or at least not much so. But people in those below very wealthy countries very much want to get wealthier, and work, or sometimes emigrate, to do so. I suggest that the revealed preferences shown by what they actually do, tell us more than responses to happiness surveys. The average bite of American food has traveled 1,500 miles and changed hands 6 times before it reaches your mouth. Which is often the best way to do things. You get more food per acre with smaller farms and more food per dollar with larger ones. Assuming the only change is smaller farms, and your still using fertilizers, modern crop varieties and such, then you can get a bit more food with a lot of careful somewhat skilled extra labor (it doesn't have to be a smaller farm, but the farmer's unlikely to give that much more labor per acre if its a very large farm). But the large farm is much more efficient, as the more food per dollar shows. And moving to organic farming (no fertilizers or manure for fertilizer, no GM crops, no pesticides) will, all else being equal, reduce yield per acre. The average new home size has doubled since 1970. A fact usually ignored by those trying to present us as stagnating or poorer. Only 22% of the energy contained in coal is effectively put to use. The rest is wasted at the power plant, through transmission, and by inefficient appliances. Cleaner and more localized energy production would eliminate much of this waste. Mass production of energy is for many purposes more efficient, even with transmission losses. More efficient appliances, are a separate issue (you can have them with big power plants or with a solar panel on your roof), and also are something we have been moving towards already. Think solar panels, solar water heaters, community wind turbines, small-scale natural gas plants that put “waste heat” to use heating nearby homes and businesses, etc. Typically (but not in every case) less efficient solutions. Today’s Americans earn more, have more, and produce more Another fact ignored by those who want to claim stagnation or decline.