Anthropocene.pdf - 0 views
-
the first significant human use of fossil fuels—coal— arose during the Song dynasty (960–1279) in China [36,37]. Drawn from mines in the north, the Chinese coal industry, developed primarily to support its iron industry, grew in size through the eleventh century to become equal to the production of the entire European (excluding Russia) coal industry in 1700.
-
the European coal industry, primarily in England, was beginning its ascent in the thirteenth century. The use of coal grew as did the size of London, and became the fuel of choice in the city because of its high energy density.
-
energy constraints provided a strong bottleneck for the growth of human numbers and activity. The discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels shattered that bottleneck. Fossil fuels represented a vast energy store of solar energy from the past that had accumulated from tens or hundreds of millions of years of photosynthesis. They were the perfect fuel source—energy-rich, dense, easily transportable and relatively straightforward to access. Human energy use rose sharply. In general, those industrial societies used four or five times as much energy as their agrarian predecessors, who in turn used three or four times as much as our hunting and gathering forebears [52].
- ...6 more annotations...
-
Western approach to Ukraine is delusional - 0 views
-
Henry Kissinger has changed his long-held view that Ukraine cannot join Nato, and we may need to do likewise. Today, both the US and Germany oppose such a step. But the one certainty about ending this struggle is that Ukraine must be given cast-iron security guarantees. It may not be unthinkable — perhaps after years more killing — to trade Ukrainian Nato membership for tolerance of continued Russian tenure of Crimea.
-
Gideon Rose, a notably hawkish fellow of the US Council on Foreign Relations, wrote recently: “It took defeat in two world wars before Germany got the message that aggression didn’t pay. It might take defeat . . . in a second Cold War for Russia to learn the same lesson. Until then, the wall must be guarded.” I hope Rose is too gloomy, but fear he is not.
Opinion | I rose from poverty, but left part of me behind - The Washington Post - 0 views
-
If it were that easy to hop classes in this country, all you’d have to do is start packing
-
the study acknowledged this is no easy feat in itself: in areas that are largely Black, or where Black and White residents are equally poor together, economic isolation made that jump all but impossible.
-
if you’re lucky enough to simply be around “better,” you’ve got a fighting chance. That’s what happened to me. I grew up in a poor Appalachian town of 900 people, but then moved to a town of about 20,000 in Tennessee, where we lived in a trailer park with a handful of other families like ours, single mothers on welfare.
- ...11 more annotations...
When Milton Friedman Ran the Show - The Atlantic - 0 views
-
Today, Friedman might seem to belong to a bygone world. The Trumpian wing of the Republican Party focuses on guns, gender, and God—a stark contrast with Friedman’s free-market individualism. Its hostility to intellectuals and scientific authority is a far cry from his grounding within academic economics.
-
The analysts associated with the Claremont Institute, the Edmund Burke Foundation, and the National Conservatism Conference (such as Michael Anton, Yoram Hazony, and Patrick Deneen) espouse a vision of society focused on preserving communal order that seems very different from anything Friedman, a self-defined liberal in the style of John Stuart Mill, described in his work.
-
Jennifer Burns, a Stanford historian, sets out to make the case in her intriguing biography Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative that Friedman’s legacy cannot be shaken so easily. As she points out, some of his ideas—the volunteer army, school choice—have been adopted as policy; others, such as a universal basic income, have supporters across the political spectrum.
- ...28 more annotations...
March 2020: How the Fed Averted Economic Disaster - WSJ - 0 views
-
Over the week of March 16, markets experienced an enormous shock to what investors refer to as liquidity, a catchall term for the cost of quickly converting an asset into cash.
-
Mr. Powell bluntly directed his colleagues to move as fast as possible.
-
They devised unparalleled emergency-lending backstops to stem an incipient financial panic that threatened to exacerbate the unfolding economic and public-health emergencies.
- ...37 more annotations...
Food Prices Hit Two-Decade High, Threatening the World's Poor - The New York Times - 0 views
-
Food prices have skyrocketed globally because of disruptions in the global supply chain, adverse weather and rising energy prices, increases that are imposing a heavy burden on poorer people around the world and threatening to stoke social unrest.
-
A global index released on Thursday by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization showed food prices in January climbed to their highest level since 2011, when skyrocketing costs contributed to political uprisings in Egypt and Libya. The price of meat, dairy and cereals trended upward from December, while the price of oils reached the highest level since the index’s tracking began in 1990.
-
But as the pandemic began in early 2020, the world experienced seismic shifts in demand for food. Restaurants, cafeterias and slaughterhouses shuttered, and more people switched to cooking and eating at home.
- ...6 more annotations...
Their Mothers Were Teenagers. They Didn't Want That for Themselves. - The New York Times - 0 views
-
The decline is accelerating: Teen births fell 20 percent in the 1990s, 28 percent in the 2000s and 55 percent in the 2010s. Three decades ago, a quarter of 15-year-old girls became mothers before turning 20, according to Child Trends estimates, including nearly half of those who were Black or Hispanic. Today, just 6 percent of 15-year-old girls become teen mothers.
-
The reasons teen births have fallen are only partly understood. Contraceptive use has grown and shifted to more reliable methods, and adolescent sex has declined. Civic campaigns, welfare restrictions and messaging from popular culture may have played roles.
-
But with progress so broad and sustained, many researchers argue the change reflects something more fundamental: a growing sense of possibility among disadvantaged young women, whose earnings and education have grown faster than their male counterparts.
- ...8 more annotations...
Best of 2023: The Decadent Opulence of Modern Capitalism - 0 views
-
while we tend to focus on stories about everything that has gone wrong, in the long run, the bigger news always ends up being the impact of growth and innovation. But because we’re so pre-occupied with everything else, it tends to sneak up on us.
-
In the left’s view, market crashes and recessions reveal the real essence of the capitalist system. In reality, they are just temporary glitches and setbacks in a larger story of persistent innovation and growth.
-
new figures showing the widening gap in wealth between the US and Europe. Jim Pethokoukis describes it as a Doom Loop of Decline and attributes it partly to the impact of heavy European regulation.
- ...18 more annotations...
Opinion | America's Irrational Macreconomic Freak Out - The New York Times - 0 views
-
The same inflationary forces that pushed these prices higher have also pushed wages to be 22 percent higher than on the eve of the pandemic. Official statistics show that the stuff that a typical American buys now costs 20 percent more over the same period. Some prices rose a little more, some a little less, but they all roughly rose in parallel.
-
It follows that the typical worker can now afford two percent more stuff. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a faster rate of improvement than the average rate of real wage growth over the past few decades.
-
many folks feel that they’re falling behind, even when a careful analysis of the numbers suggests they’re not.
- ...16 more annotations...
Immigration powered the economy, job market amid border negotiations - The Washington Post - 0 views
-
There isn’t much data on how many of the new immigrants in recent years were documented versus undocumented. But estimates from the Pew Research Center last fall showed that undocumented immigrants made up 22 percent of the total foreign-born U.S. population in 2021. That’s down compared to previous decades: Between 2007 and 2021, the undocumented population fell by 14 percent, Pew found. Meanwhile, the legal immigrant population grew by 29 percent.
-
immigrant workers are supporting tremendously — and likely will keep powering for years to come.
-
The economy is projected to grow by $7 trillion more over the next decade than it would have without new influxes of immigrants, according to the CBO.
- ...21 more annotations...
A Spectacular, Colorful Chart of Who Works (and Who Doesn't Work) in America Today - De... - 1 views
-
If 37 percent of American adults aren't in the labor force, what are they doing?
-
More 19inShare Email Print The share of American adults who are either working or actively looking for work -- i.e.: the labor force participation rate -- fell to its lowest point since 1979
-
The reason the labor force's share of the country is shrinking has to do with both economics and demographics. We're becoming an older country
- ...2 more annotations...
Examinations of Health Care Overlook Mergers - NYTimes.com - 0 views
-
What is missing from the stampede of policy innovation is something to tackle one of the best-known causes of high costs in the book: excessive market concentration.
-
The share of metropolitan areas with highly concentrated hospital markets, by the standards of antitrust enforcers at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, rose to 77 percent from 63 percent over the period.
-
And consolidation is continuing. Professor Gaynor counts more than 1,000 hospital system mergers since the mid-1990s, often involving dozens of hospitals. In 2002 doctors owned about three in four physician practices. By 2008 more than half were owned by hospitals.
- ...8 more annotations...
The Persistence of Racial Resentment - NYTimes.com - 0 views
-
In the 16 presidential elections between 1952 and 2012, only one Democratic candidate, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, won a majority of the white vote
-
Obama’s track record with white voters is not very different from that of other Democratic candidates.
-
In the aftermath of Obama’s election, white support for Congressional Democrats collapsed to its lowest level in the history of House exit polling, 38 percent in 2010 — at once driving and driven by the emerging Tea Party.
- ...8 more annotations...
Sanctuary without end: The refugees the world forgot - CNN.com - 0 views
-
The refugees the world forgot
-
For Dadaab is the largest refugee camp in the world. If it was a city, it would be one of Kenya's largest.
-
Abdula and his family fled Somalia's brutal civil war for Dadaab in 1994. The 26-year-old has been living here since childhood and knows little else.
- ...3 more annotations...
AP poll: A slight majority of Americans are now expressing negative view of blacks - Th... - 1 views
-
51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey
-
When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election.
-
Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an AP survey done in 2011, 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test.
These Colorful Propaganda Maps Fueled 20th-Century Wars - 0 views
-
The map above is a great example. Made in 1900, it portrays Russia as an octopus with tentacles reaching out in all directions, strangling Poland, Finland, and China, and reaching toward Turkey, Afghanistan, and Persia. The map’s creator, British cartographer Frederick Rose, was, in his time, perhaps the most influential maker of what are known as anthropomorphic maps. Though the octopus is the main character of this map, most European countries are depicted as various people, which is where the style gets its name.
Russia Drops Bid to Refuel Warships on Spanish Territory as Tensions with NATO Rise - WSJ - 0 views
-
Russia canceled a bid to have Syria-bound warships refuel on Spanish territory as tensions rose between Moscow and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization over Russian ships deploying in the Baltic Sea and new NATO measures to reinforce Eastern European allies
-
defusing rising intra-alliance tensions as alliance defense ministers meet in Brussels.
Pakistani Rights Activist Is Shot and Killed in Karachi - The New York Times - 0 views
-
The drive-by shooting took place late Saturday night in the southern port city of Karachi. Four me
-
This was the third high-profile killing of a rights activist in Karachi in recent years and points to the immense dangers faced by activists in a country troubled by religious extremism a
-
Mr. Zaki, 40, a blogger, rose to prominence after he campaigned with other activists against Maulana Abdul Aziz,
- ...3 more annotations...
« First
‹ Previous
41 - 60 of 310
Next ›
Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page