The water footprint of an animal is expressed as: [doesn't format well in this post, but basically Water Footprint from Feed + Drink + Service Water = Total Water Footprint] WF = WFfeed + WFdrink + WFserv where WFfeed, WFdrink and WFserv represent the water footprint of an animal for animal category a in country c in production systems s related to feed, drinking water and service-water consumption, respectively.
Paper in question: http://www.waterfootprint.org/...
If we're all Keynesians, why aren't we all breaking windows to improve the economy?
Wouldn't that make for quite a bit of work for glass and vinyl companies, window manufacturers, installers, sales people, insurance claims workers, etc.? It wouldn't be very useful, compared to the option of not breaking those windows and finding something better to have those people do, but I don't see how it wouldn't improve employment opportunities. Quite a lot of people would now be working usefully if they could find someone to hire them, and quite a lot of employers would increase their employees if they had more sales.
Increasing money supply doesn't magically make people want to consume[...]
Really? How many people would choose to finally replace that old refrigerator if they had a sudden windfall of hundreds of dollars? How many would take the family out to a restaurant or ice cream shop if an extra $50 came their way? How many would decide to replace that car if they got a higher-paying job (or a job at all)? How many would buy/hire...? If you don't believe those numbers would be very large, I think the people you are talking with are very different from those I have met. Getting money to people may be a challenge, but their rate of spending once received is just a balance between their desire to save (or pay down debt) and their desire to spend. With so much debt incurred over past decades, we are unfortunately facing a general trend toward paying off debt when unemployment is high, rather than when times are good.
I'll take Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat, and ultimately Friedrich Hayek over JMK, thanks
I don't know Bastiat, but despite the many attempts to persuade me otherwise, I fail to see how Hayek's work proscribes any action useful in our current economic situation.
I know everybody loves to bash Walmart, but is really justified? At the risk of greatly oversimplifying, you can help poor people by 1. getting them more money, or 2. making the things they need to buy cost less. Walmart is working very hard at doing thing 2. Do you think Walmart's margins are higher or lower than the retail industry average?
There are other sides to this, though, such as employment. It is taken as a given that Walmart's entry into a market places downward pressure on prices, and that there are benefits from this. However, their entry into a market also places downward pressure on wages. Making things cost less only helps if it isn't outweighed by reductions in pay. The price reductions from Walmart (generally a good thing) end up being distributed across the income scale, but the lower-income segments alone face the decrease in pay to low-paying jobs that accompany Walmart's entry into a market. Walmart is an income re-distribution machine, providing most of its benefit to people with higher incomes, and most of its downside to people with low incomes. See: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/research/walmart.shtml for (much) more on this. There may also be more of a wage-depressing effect than a price-depressing effect, which would make the bargain bad for the economy overall, let alone its redistributing effects. Let's also look at what Walmart's margins actually are, and whether or not they could be lower, as well as where they come from. This article examines those questions, and finds evidence that Walmart could both remain competitive and pay employees more: http://www.epi.org/publication/ib223/ .
The same people wanting us driving electric cars also don't want us building new coal-fired power plants that would be required to support the additional load. The power grids can barely handle the loads they're under now.
Fixed that for you. Renewable-energy plants are rarely opposed by individuals supporting the use of electric cars.
Simply because you do not own the roads, you do not clean up the mess and you don't have to pay for all the costs of hospitalisation, rehabilitation and permanent disability. It's called vehicle registrations and drivers licence, don't like it, walk or take public transport.
Neither does the federal government. Roads are owned by state and local governments. The clean up is usually done by the local government. The insurance that I pay for pays for the expenses that result, and if I'm at fault, both my insurance company and myself are liable for damages.
The federal government provides and maintains interstate highways, state and local governments provide and maintain most other roads.
Any costs not borne by you may be borne by customers of your insurance company, and costs not borne by them are borne by the general public. Your payments to your insurer do not nearly encapsulate all the costs, and not all of them are even borne by your insurer (injured person receives care at a public medical facility either beyond insurance coverage limits or without insurance coverage present, for example).
Motor vehicle transportation, including licensing and registration, has always been a state issue - so why is it acceptable for a group of unelected federal bureaucrats to pass a decree that would greatly implicate the privacy for the majority of the population? Where do they derive their authority? Do you think something like this would actually go anywhere if they tried to enact it by legislation?
Motor vehicles have been regulated by the federal government. It is not accurate to characterize that as exclusively a state issue.
Greatly implicate privacy? That is a real overstatement, given the limited collection of data that is proposed.
Authority? Uh, the Constitution allowing them to pass laws?
I don't know why it couldn't go somewhere by way of legislation. Why do you think that it wouldn't?
Furthermore, is there a real problem that this solves, or is it just a solution in search of a problem? Will this really provide that much more useful data that can't be determined through traditional means (aka measurements and physics)? I just see this being too susceptible to abuse - ie police scanning impounded cars as part of their 'inventory inspection' and writing additional summons for what they find.
Providing better information on the circumstances of accidents is not something you can see helping safety? Wouldn't this be a much simpler and more thorough and accurate way to get useful data (G-forces incurred during impacts, etc.)? Aren't we talking about very short duration record-keeping, rather than long periods of driving history? Granted, it would be a very different matter if the proposal involved long-term vehicle activity records.
The reason that every major university maintains a department of mathematics is that it's cheaper than institutionalizing all those people.
