Category Archives: Economics

“The Worst Mistake Of The Human Race”

This essay by Jared Diamond is a quarter of a century old, but it’s still worth pondering, particularly as we now know much more about just how bad for our health grains are. I think, though, that he misses a key benefit of agriculture — the fact that it has allowed us to produce billions of people. Minds are a resource, even if we poorly utilize most of them. The more people we have, the likelier we are to come up with new true advances. I’m pretty sure that absent agriculture, technology would not have advanced much, and we’d be nowhere near the position we’re in now — about to finally expand off the planet, and attain the capability of preventing a species-destroying event.

Promises, Promises

The president has a lot to be held to account for:

The problem for Obama is that his predictions were not only wrong; they were terribly wide of the mark. For example, since the president was sworn in, America has suffered a net decline of roughly half a million jobs. According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average annual premium for family health coverage through an employer reached $15,073 in 2011—an increase of 9 percent, or $1,303, over the previous year. The 9 percent increase in family premiums between 2010 and 2011 followed an increase of 3 percent between 2009 and 2010. Under Obama, the number of foreclosures was the worst in history. In addition, last year was the worst sales year on record for housing, while home values are nearly 35 percent lower than they were five years ago.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for 41 consecutive months. The deficit was around $1.3 trillion the day Obama took office in the midst of the financial crisis; according to the Congressional Budget Office, in the current 2012 budget year, the deficit will be around $1.25 trillion. And a record 46 million Americans are now living in poverty.

In addition, during the Obama years we’ve experienced the weakest economic recovery on record. America’s credit rating was downgraded for the first time in our history. The standard of living for Americans fell more steeply than at any time since the government began recording it five decades ago. Income for American families has actually declined more following the economic recession than it did during the official recession itself.

Change!

[Update a few minutes later]

Heh. ObamanomicsOutsourced.com.