It's not flammable. And properly processed, even a leakage in the containment wouldn't necessarily be disastrous, i.e. requires cleanup, but no like chernobyl problems.
I wish we would put more research into this.
Imagine if we could make nuclear waste relatively benign? It would revolutionize the entire world.
In my country, you can work in a warehouse. You get job security, full health coverage, and 18 per hour. There are worker safety regulations that actually get followed, regular breaks, shade, and ppe provided if you're working with dangerous chemicals. You're not out in the sun all day. The US agricultural industry can't provide any of this. Why would anyone work for them if they weren't a poor immigrant planning to take their wages back to Mexico, where 16 is at least a living wage?
There is absolutely nothing unpleasant about working in food services.
What makes it 'unpleasant' is the destruction of the social contract that valued 'regular work', and the fulfillment of specific jobs by illegal migrants which creates a negative 'social class signalling' dynamic to the work.
It's socially destructive, and irreversible - and I believe it adds considerably to inequality.
However you construe the problem (unpleasant, low social capital, etc.) I've gotta believe that in a functional labor economy, illegal immigration would not be incentivized to this degree.
And yeah, some of the jobs are very unpleasant (I've worked a few of them). The article's sly portrayal of toothless guys and drug addicts refusing cushy gigs picking grapes at vineyards is meant to give an impression without coming out and saying something that probably cannot be supported by the data: the jobs are good and the citizens are lazy.
Every argument that "we simply can't get American citizens to do it" seems to be an appeal to a broken system staying broken.
"You can't keep paying people more to solve the problem, it doesn't work. No one aspires to earn 30k a year anyway"
No!
The average income for the USA in 2008 was $28K!
That's the average - meaning that for every person earning $75K (not that much) there are a dozen people earning $20K.
90% of people don't work as an 'aspiration'. The don't have 'careers' they have 'jobs'. And 90% of jobs in this world are not very exciting. Stocking shelves, pushing paper etc..
It's crazy to suggest that 'almost all of our jobs are crap and boring and nobody wants to do them but desperate illegal migrants who'll work for crap pay'.
If you pay reasonable wages, people will do regular jobs - that's how almost the entire world works.
If there as no negative social stigma doing things like 'stocking shelves' - and BTW it's a very new phenom - then things would work just fine.
The claim I objected to is much more nonsensical based off of a median figure than it is when based off of a mean. You use median income if you want a sense of how much money a "typical person" earns as opposed to how much the entire population earns collectively. But neither median nor mean will tell you anything at all about the shape of the distribution.
And yes, as dragonwriter points out, your own link clearly shows that the mean US income for 2008 was just over $28K. (It also shows that the mean US income for 2008 was just under $27K; within-article consistency is not a big priority on Wikipedia...)
Do you happen to know why, according to that wikipedia page, "According to the U.S Census Bureau 'The per capita income for the overall population in 2008 was $26,964'", whereas according to the source of your charts (which suggest that citations should credit the Census Bureau!), it was $38,376? ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MAPAINUSA646N ). One of those is being seriously adjusted. I tend to suspect it's the Fed chart, which notes that its population base is those aged 15 years and over.
I'm still struggling to understand why you responded to my original comment in the first place. What point are you trying to make? The median income value tells you absolutely nothing about the relative numbers of people making incomes other than the median value.
The first part of Table 1, on page six, reports medians. The per capita section, which is at the top of page 7, reports means (though it retains the median heading, which is admittedly poor data presentation.)
>The Census Bureau releases estimates of household money income as medians, percent distributions by income categories, and on a per capita basis. Estimates are available by demographic characteristics of householders and by the composition of households
Yes, later in the article it says that, too. Which still is inconsistent with your claim; both the median and the usual average, the mean (per capita), are reported, it is not the case that just the median is used and reported as the "average".
Edit Neither of you understand there is a difference between what the Census Bureau Considers the Mean and Median Income. Failing to understand that Median Income is not simply half on this side and half on the other is your problem, feel free to read
Here's the text of that [4] footnote, from the pdf you link:
> The data shown in this section are per capita incomes and their respective confidence intervals. Per capita income is the mean income computed for every man, woman, and child in a particular group. It is derived by dividing the total income of a particular group by the total population in that group (excluding patients or inmates in institutional quarters).
Please try to make arguments that aren't immediately falsified by the quotes you cite in "support".
> Edit Neither of you understand there is a difference between what the Census Bureau Considers the Mean and Median Income. Failing to understand that Median Income is not simply half on this side and half on the other is your problem, feel free to read http://mcdc.missouri.edu/allabout/measures_of_income/
Sure. From that link:
> The median of a distribution is the one that ranks in the middle; since there are 98,003 households in this county we can imply from the median that if you ranked all the households in this county by their income the one in the middle (ranking 49002) would have an income of $34,157.
Perhaps you should read the footnote [4]; while the heading on the column with income figures on the table says median, the figures in the per capita section are means, not medians. Here's the footnote text: "The data shown in this section are per capita incomes and their respective confidence intervals. Per capita income is the mean income computed for every man,
woman, and child in a particular group. It is derived by dividing the total income of a particular group by the total population in that group (excluding patients or inmates in institutional quarters)."
> Neither of you understand there is a difference between what the Census Bureau Considers the Mean and Median Income.
No, actuslly, I do recognize that there is a difference between the mean and the median, that the Census publishes both, and that the former is the usual definition of "average" in unqualified English use.
> Failing to understand that Median Income is not simply half on this side and half on the other is your problem
No, even your source says that that is exactly what the median is. The mean, OTOH, is something else entirely.
"It wasn't as cool to work at fast food, and the area was becoming more affluent."
If you walk into a 7-11 in Scandinavia (yes, they have some there) - esp. in a small town - you'll sometimes see a drop-dead '10' Swedish model working behind the counter.
Why? Because 'it's normal' for people to do such jobs - as you say - 'when you were young' it was normal.
When those jobs are done by non-citizens, especially of a different ethnicity, then there is a 'stigma' associated with that work, and the social value drops quite a lot.
The notion that 'the area became more affluent' and kids wouldn't do those jobs is a total misrepresentation of reality.
A) If the social context didn't change, then kids would do those jobs.
B) 'They had to hire illegal migrants' is again another lie. As the area becomes more wealthy - guess what - wages are supposed to rise. Yes, that means the price of burgers should rise a little bit as well. But it's again, a total misrepresentation, borderline lie to imply that the 'only way to have service workers is to hire illegal workers'.
This is beyond false.
The anecdote you described provides the fundamental basis for the rise of inequality in America.
The notion that 'illegal workers' must be used to support economic activity is obviously unfeasible in the long-term, that somehow growth depends on a class of workers who'll work below the real prevailing wage - and who cannot organize, collect social security, healthcare etc.
No - it's completely upside down.
There are so many places in the world where 'regular kids' continue to work at McDonald's. Wages and benefits are higher, and there is no real social stigma. (Of course, working at McD's is never going to be considered a choice job, but you did it :) )
"I do think something is missing though when kids don't learn what it's like to hold a retail type job dealing with the public."
Yes - I fully agree. Been there.
But a bifurcated society creates stigma and deep 'social class signalling' in these jobs and it destroys the social compact.
Imagine this for a moment: that Obama or Trump gives all illegal migrants instant citizenship with full rights, healthcare, the right to organize labour, social security.
Then guess what happens by the 'illegals are necessary economic logic': McDonald's has to 'fire the new citizens' and 'hire actual, new illegals'!
It's a destructive, unsustainable Ponzi scheme.
Local wages should rise until the jobs are filled.
Some farming jobs just won't work out - those crops can be grown elsewhere.
Yes - we need to treat people with humanity and dignity and there'll always be some people who 'fall through the cracks' - but the systematic importation of illegal workers on a large scale is inhuman.
I am appalled by the casual sexism and racism of the parent comment. "esp. in a small town - you'll sometimes see a drop-dead '10' Swedish model working behind the counter" --> Is it okay to refer to a person by a sexist score? Does the HN community condones this and at the same time rally against sexual harassment at statups? How is this comment not dead yet?
There is no mention of gender or race in the parent comment. Here is only your opinion implying only females can be models and that being an illegal immigrant is somehow tied to a race.
I think in Sweden, were this has been changing in big cities in recent years, it's mostly because you can't support yourself in many areas on a 7-11 salary anymore. If you can't get an apartment you can't stay in the area, so there's no young temporary workforce left and people with options aren't going to commute long for a 7-11 job.
There's just no way salaries can keep up with social changes. Housing prices have doubled in the last 10 years. Salaries are already high and hamburgers expensive in Sweden.
A 19 year old in Sweden would make $14/hour at 7-11. That's around $1900/month after taxes. To double that with progressive taxes you would have to make roughly as much as a fairly well paid software developer here. A rental unit could easily be $1200-1400 and to buy a 330 square feet apartment would cost you around $300k, which is essentially the same as SF. Say you save $500/month then it still takes you more than 7 years just to get the cash contribution. It's not happening.
"It doesn't matter how cheap the land/housing is if you can't get a job while living on it."
B.S.
Unemployment in the US is relatively low even on a long term basis.
The average home prices in the US is $188K. Most people can afford that.
There is more opportunity for mortgages and financial services than at any time in history.
There is more opportunity for mobility than at any time in history.
You have it easier than any generation in history - but all you can do is complain.
If you want to 'have it like the boomers did growing up' - well, you can skip going to college because few of them did - and you can do some crap job pushing paper for most of your life, in boring but steady employment, and buy a small, mediocre home in the burbs and mow your lawn. That was the 'steady, sable American dream'. You have opportunities that they never had - and that most kids in the world would kill for.
> Unemployment in the US is relatively low even on a long term basis.
Dear God save me from whatever unemployment you deem to be high. Over a third of the people in this country don't work and another third work part time.
Maybe you actually believe those numbers coming out of the gov on unemployment and don't pay attention to the people who have rolled off the unemployment benefits. I know people that have been looking for work for the better part of 5 years without luck.
Also, have to call bullshit on the "You have it easier than any generation in history" remark. This generation is the first generation since the inception of this country to not have it better than the previous one. Every person born today is born with upwards of 70k debt thanks to the drunken sailors in Congress. The bill will come due. It always does.
Would you rather get drafted and go to war? Because everything you say hints at politicians creating a war just to divert attention and offer the unemployed "a job": playing a first person shooter with real victims.
Those sorts of wars are largely in America's past. The real money is made in high-tech munitions: cruise missiles, anti-missile missiles, and drones with missiles.
If you're a defense contractor, you're not interested in selling "hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground," but rather guns (weapons systems) and ammo.
As a corollary, no one is lobbying politicians on behalf of a force increase at the scale you're suggesting. Private military contractors just don't operate at the "give the hoards of unemployed young men some plausible way to die" scale.
The situation you're referring to is more of an issue in countries with weaker economies and geographically close potential enemies.
What I was saying was give the hoards of men games to play: piloting drones, UUVs, playing Red Alert with robotic infantry, mostly against a weaker economy, the real victims. And let's not forget the amount of jobs created to build those drones.
I find your lack of imagination disturbing. There are more types of games out there, others can be based around finding the best designs, or alternate fulfillment for a standard interface if materials are short.
We have entire video-games, and mods for games, that revolve around setting up factories and designs.
The 'boomers' invented most of the 'computer stuff' you use, most 'developers' today are hacks (granted, some are amazing).
Boomers had difficult upbringing, brought real social change, lived through - and ended the Cold War.
Female boomers were expected to be secretaries - and had to fight for the right just to do normal jobs in the workplace.
Even the boys - were expected to do the same jobs their fathers did, mostly boring labour - and only a fraction of them got to go to University.
There was no such thing as 'startups' back in the day - there were zero opportunities for middle class young people to generate wealth or do globally impactful things.
They lived during the draft, and 50 000 of them died in Vietnam.
Millenials are born into massive entitlement, wealth , privilege and opportunity.
You get bored easily, and don't want to do the same job for more than a year - but expect loyalty and long term employment? Yes - boomers had steadier work - but it was also incredibly boring, stagnant - and in real wages, pay was crap.
Boomers could own a small, shoddy home in the suburbs, and were able to have 'a fridge' and 'an oven' and 'a car' - even though they were all crap by today's standards - that was 'The American Dream' and they were generally happy.
If you are born past the fall of the Berlin wall in America - unless you are from a ghetto - you do not know hardship.
As for real estate: the average home price in the US is about $200K. You can afford a home. You just can't be 'Instagram baller'.
As for 'higher positions' - do you think the 'Greatest Generation' just handed over their choice positions to the 'Boomers'? Or do you think it took mostly a lifetime of work and loyalty? If you don't like your job make yourself CEO of your own company. What's stopping you?
American Millenials have more opportunity than any group of people in the entirety of history - enough with your complaining.
This response is so stereotypical and contrary to the facts of the conditions of young people today, I have to thank you for demonstrating both my and the parent's points. Thanks for that!
"It is so perfectly stereotypical and dicorced from reality "
It is exactly reality - and that you don't grasp it only validates how utterly self-deluded Millenials are.
By every measure Millenials are doing better.
Millenials have:
+ Better healthcare, more coverage
+ Better access to education, information, more college grads than ever
+ More job opportunities, more diverse fields to apply knowlege
+ More opportunity for wealth creation
+ A life full of gadgets, toys and trifles that couldn't even be imagined
+ You have 'fast fashion' - just 20 years ago there was no suh thing. Clothes were expensive.
+ Your cars are pretty good, stereos are great, they are fun to drive. Drive a car from the 1970's - they are shit-boxes
+ You have access to unlimited entertainment and music. In the 1970s' you had 10 records. You wanted to listen to more you went to your friends house.
+ You have more mobility and access to jobs not only around America, but around the world.
+ Millenial girls can actually have careers and jobs - and not have to fight vicious stereotyping.
It's basically disgusting that this generation should make existential complains.
What are your beefs?
That you don't bet to be CEO after 1 year?
That you can't live in a baller apartment in SF and have to actually commute from the burbs?
That you don't have job security? Well, you could, if you wanted a more boring job.
That you have school debt? Every generation did. You could have gone to a state school, private school is a luxury.
All of these gripes are really sad 'Oh the Boomers fed everything up' and 'life sucks'. Bullshit.
Provide some facts.
Other than University being a little more expensive - I don't see anything that is remotely more difficult. And FYU with interest rates so low compared to the 15% it was in the 1980s, I say in real dollars, maybe that's not so bad.
You cite no actual quantitative measures to support this claim, so rather than rebutting with such I'll just say this: by many economic measures, Millenials are worse off than boomers (by a few, they're also worse of than Gen X, though by more Gen X is in the worst position of the three, though it usually gets left out of comparisons.)
> All of these gripes are really sad 'Oh the Boomers fed everything up' and 'life sucks'. Bullshit.
It's true that the f-ing up (specifically, of the features in the politico-economic system that resulted in aggregate gains being widely distributed) mostly happened wat the end of the time when the "Greatest" Generation was running the show, the Boomers just were the last generation to have a substantial fraction of their working life before things were f-ed up.
What is stereotypical and divorced from reality are the things you are missing.
The economy is structured as a ponzi scheme. The ponzi scheme will collapse and many unsympathetic boomers will go broke.
To take your interest rate example. Prices are inversely correlated to interest rates. If you buy when interest rates are high (low prices) and sell when interest rates are low (high prices) then you benefit enormously. Since interest rates are pretty much as low as they can go then there is no upside left for millennials. Only downside. I, like many millennials, wish for much much higher interest rates. Low interest rates are another wealth transfer from those with earnings (millennials) to those with capital (boomers).
I do not suggest that all millennial complaints are valid. I'm simply saying that they shouldn't be dismissed with technological handwaving. The hidden message in the complaints is that we're in this together. The ponzi scheme economy hurts all of us.
Speaking as a non-American millennial, that is largely true though.
I think the current generation American kids will be even more worse.
When I saw kids in the US and when I see the kids in India. Its just feels like American kids live in some kind of Disneyland. The level of competitiveness and hard work as a culture in kids in India have is just a whole double digit factors higher.
The fact is that US ecosystem is largely saved because of the Economic inertia and the endless stream exceptionally talented pool of great people who immigrate there. That large replenishing pool of people pays for the party forward.
Millennials also have helicopter parents. This is a totally new hardship. Being raised in a way that is completely incompatible with reality. Then we get to the "real" world and are told we don't know anything. Well gee thanks dad. Judging by the American economy and the state of world affairs, doesn't seem like boomers are all they crack themselves up to be either.
Helicopter parenting is not new (except for the name), and is neither unique to nor universal among parents of Millenials.
> Judging by the American economy and the state of world affairs, doesn't seem like boomers are all they crack themselves up to be either.
To be fair to the Boomers, while they certainly failed to fix it, the damage was mostly done by the "Greatest Generation" (the strong economy the GG often gets credit for was created when the GG were in their youth and the Lost Generation was running the show.)
Sorry I am going to have to disagree. Parents used to be strict, far stricter, sure. But helicopter parents is just pure putting [kids in a bubble](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-rise-of-the-helicopter-pa...). I do agree that it isn't universal. Anecdotally, my friends who are doing best in life right now are the ones who have less helicoptery parents (obviously not scientific, this is just my observation and trying to make sense of what I'm seeing). One friend in particular, grew up in a rural area and had to work very hard. He's now a PhD and works at Bosch.
> Millenials are born into massive entitlement, wealth , privilege and opportunity
Something is strongly wrong with your reasoning if you think that boomers did so much things right and failed miserable in their most important job that is raise kids.
Not sure how this is being downvoted - the truth hurts. We just have it too damn good, and without any wide-scale struggles to know how good we have it.
I would like to a read a serious response from a detractor.
I'm your Huckleberry. My parents are late boomers and they and many of their friends were able to sleep-walk into middle class comfort and early retirement. Literally all they had to do was show up for work, 9-5, Monday-Friday and their prosperity was lifted on a rising tide of property prices. When they were in their 20s you applied for a job by sending a CV and covering letter. No three rounds of assessment days and homework assignments. When they left work at the end of the day, it didn't follow them home because technology didn't allow it. And the world of fax machines and mail rooms was limited in the amount of ruthless efficiency pressure it could put on workers.
They didn't even need degrees. And my mother is a perfect example of how boomer women being expected to be secretaries is anachronistic SJW nonsense. She never attended university, just started working as a junior claims person at an insurance firm in the 70s, showed up for work for 30 years and ended up in the boardroom with stock options. Never faced any discrimination. And she would be the first to admit she never put much into her career - no need for constant re-training, seminars, conferences, when she was home she was home.
While enjoying these comfortable lives, their generation with their hippy views presided over explosive increases in immigration to most western countries, and are the architects of wealth-hoarding tricks like buy-to-let and all kinds of snaky BS union-breaking contract work. The bottom line is, as a young person today you simply couldn't repeat their lives in terms of comfort and financial security. To match it, you'd need to put in several times the effort and hours they did, with a lot more anxiety biting at your heels.
The first Millennials came of age to the images of those planes hitting the WTC and, as corny as it is, that was some incredibly apt symbology. The few of us who manage to be "anti-fragile" may make out good from this new era, but that the security of the ordinary middle-class majority has been shattered is indisputable.
In the modern world, for most people, there's nothing productive to do and no fame to get from it.
In the USA, all the highways are already built (and even when they're failing, their fixing will be postponed).
High speed rail lines weren't, and they're not going to be. Not on any human time frame.
So most people are engaged with running pre-built technosphere that is slowly falling apart, with no new developments, for ever-shrinking pay, while more and more money are extorted from them to pay for previous generations entitlements, and also for medicine, real estate, tuition and law, which from services all turned into endless money sinks.
Friges and ovens are not the alpha and omega of life. Productivity, respect and growth are. Are we having any all across post-development countries?
"Productivity, respect and growth are. Are we having any all
across post-development countries?"
Have any of you ever taken a basic Econ course?
'No room for growth'?
THE ECONOMY HAS BEEN GROWING EVERY YEAR.
Do you realize that 'feature phones' to 'cell phones' is economic growth?
Do you realize that '2G to 4G' is economic growth?
Do you realize that more people going to college than ever before is good?
There are new medicine trials every day - gene therapy. Jesus H Christ you can now chose the gender and eye colour of your offspring. That's how advanced we are.
100 years ago - there was no 'medicine'. 95% of all operations were basically amputations with crossed fingers of no infection.
Do you realize that the amount of air travel in the world has doubled in the last little while?
That you have access to 100000x more information that people just 20 years ago, before the internet?
You do realize that the iPhone/Android/Facebook are only 10 years old?
That 20 years ago there was no YCombinator?
I'm just going to assume that most of you are too young to have any perspective, because I just can't understand the commentary here.
When you hit your 30's, you can look back and your own life can be a literal testament to the change.
Yes, some things stay the same, but at least in terms of material productivity, things are better.
If the college provides same service while extorting twice as much money, this means that economy grows, but people become poorer, more indebted and strained. The economy might be growing; but WE don't.
> Do you realize that more people going to college than ever before is good?
But when they graduate they have worse employment prospects than High School graduates 40 years ago.
> Do you realize that '2G to 4G' is economic growth?
But how many participate in it as makers and not just as consumers?
When Interstates happened, a lot of people made them with their hands. But now, very few people are directly involved in the 2G to 4G transition and are proud for it. The others just feel like a passengers in a fast moving bus without any control of the route, or, for that reason, trip safety.
> Jesus H Christ you can now chose the gender and eye colour of your offspring
But can you afford it today as a middle-income person? If you can't, it's not there yet. What's the engagement numbers?
> You do realize that the iPhone/Android/Facebook are only 10 years old?
...but I liked more what was before them. I would have preferred N900 and LiveJournal, too bad I don't have this choice realistically. Talk about bus passengers.
> Do you realize that the amount of air travel in the world has doubled in the last little while?
How many people are making it happen? And not on the crappy jobs such as flight attendants? Wait - now even the pilots have their jobs unsatisfactory thanks to long hours and bad pay.
Okay, here's one. The boomer's coasted on the tail end of a rising post-war economy and government largesse, then burned the ladder behind them and destroyed their legacy by electing Reagan. By any measure (college financing, wages, home prices) they were ridiculously advantaged relative to young people today, who now have to suffer under an obscenely priced regime of credentialism, largely administered (for their own profit) by Boomers.
Instead of extending these advantages to young people, they sold them down the river to an actor pretending to be a conservative, who got off on police shooting protestors and buddied up with apartheid South Africa. Why? So they could get pay less taxes and get false promises of "animal spirits" inflating their 401ks. And when the social progress they ostensibly fought so hard for came up against the wall, they chose to let schools be resegregated, throw all the POC drug users in jail, and have LGBTQ people die of AIDS (because, y'know, property values).
This disgusting rightward lurch sets the stage for a CIA scion to pretend he was a cowboy and kill half a million innocent people in the Middle East and destroy the economy. And now a parody of Reagan himself to do the same or worse, putting the nail in the coffin of Millennial's future.
And also: Ended the Cold War? Look at 2017 and think about that one. More like destroyed an already poor country with corrupt Capitalism, so the KGB could take over and come back at us even stronger.
"The boomer's coasted on the tail end of a rising post-war economy and government largesse, then burned the ladder behind them and destroyed their legacy by electing Reagan. "
Utter bullshit.
It's not even anectodal - it's just complete narrative fiction.
This is HN, try some facts.
Which material or social elements regarding standard of living between the generations, implies that 'Millenials have it harder'?
By every external measure, you have more wealth and opportunity than any generation in history.
"This disgusting rightward lurch sets the stage for a CIA scion to pretend he was a cowboy "
What the smack are you on about?
This is HN not the Huffington Post.
"Ended the Cold War? Look at 2017 and think about that one."
If you were alive during the cold war, then you know that 2017 is obviously not the cold war.
> If you were alive during the cold war, then you know that 2017 is obviously not the cold war.
As a Gen Xer, I was alive during a lot of the late Cold War, and I'm very much aware that after the brief hiatus with the fall of the Soviet Union, there's been wide talk of a growing new cold war between the US and Russia since the Balkans crises of the 1990s, and that that Cold War has included many of the hallmarks of the old one, including proxy wars, direct saber rattling, violent covert actions, attempts by each side to subvert the government of the other principal and/or allies, etc.
I was actually alive during the Cold War because I'm an older millennial, but since you're on some Boomer Archie Bunker rehash trip, I doubt that matters.
I agree, although I prefer a physical computer or shared session to whiteboard. I always tell interviewees that they can use pseudo-code or make up functions as long as they explain what they are intended to do. This takes the pressure off of knowing specific language constructs and leads to better overall assessment in my experience.
In economics, there are just to many variables to satisfy - and of course, the impossible variable which is the nuance and choices that humans make.
That doesn't make it unworthy, it just means we have to understand what we measure and why, and the limitations of it.
If you pay your mother to babysit, that goes into the GDP. If she does it for free, like most families - it doesn't go onto the GDP - yet the same amount of value was created.
The GDP also does not measure consumer surpluses, which is crazy.
It also doesn't account for the degradation of so many things. Clean water for example. A lake is polluted - unless someone is hit, economically speaking, it doesn't factor into the GDP. Well, we clearly 'value' clean water and streams on some level, maybe we should have a 'balance sheet' of 'natural assets' and put a number on them.
People tend to move around measurable things, and putting numbers on things changes hearts and minds.
Example: insurance companies are starting to change more for certain elements of climate risk. Maybe not quite 'climate change' in the grand sense, but certainly local climate issues. Then business have to respond because costs go up. I find a lot of business people are like that - once it's in numbers, measures, costs, it's easier to get on board.
If there's a real macro problem with economics, is that we need to measure something better than the GDP :)
Also, because of comparative value, it's hard to be objective with the GDP.
+ I think the author would put socialism square in his view of 'Eurocentric Modernism' as well.
+ Trump is the farthest thing from a neoliberal. He's a nationalist/protectionist, anti free trade.
I reject a lot of the author's claims about Adam Smith and 'narrow self interest'. Generally, people are concerned about their own well-being more than others, that's just a fact, it doesn't make us greedy. Knowing this, we can model human behaviour and markets etc. with some degree of rationality.
Adam Smith believed the #1 attribute of a CEO was 'benevolence' for gosh sakes :).
So much hardcore capitalist stuff is attributed to Smith, when really he was not. He was explaining how things work, not an ideologue.
I wish we would put more research into this.
Imagine if we could make nuclear waste relatively benign? It would revolutionize the entire world.