I’ve been hearing about these data from Larry Bartel’s book Unequal Democracy for awhile now:
There is a nice op-ed on these data by economist Alan Blinder in the New York Times. The pattern is quite striking: everyone does better under democrats and inequality decreases, slightly. No wonder Republicans try to distract voters by talking about […]
The insistence by some biologists that we must halt economic growth in order to save the environment has bothered me for some time, but I was prompted to write about it now because yet another, albeit minor, group has adopted a policy statement on the issue. That a naturalist group has agreed to this nonsense […]
That economic growth, however defined, has caused environmental degradation (e.g. pollution, biodiversity loss, depletion of natural resources) is unquestionable. As I discuss below, it does not follow from this premise that policies aimed at halting economic growth are optimal (or even good) for environmental protection. Nevertheless, a sizable minority, if not majority, of ecologists and […]
From climate change to species extinctions, ecology has joined economics among the ranks of dismal sciences, and evolution may not be far behind. A short piece in this week’s edition of Science summarizes numerous studies across many species demonstrating the sinister impacts of fishing, and what it means for optimal management. It has […]
I’ve been musing quite a bit about the environment lately. For the economically-minded, it’s a classic cost-benefit analysis. For others, it takes on a strong moral dimension. The following thought experiment is my feeble attempt to isolate these concerns. I’ll be very interested to hear what the other MP bloggers think […]