The Kuznets environmental curve describes an empirical regularity between environmental quality and economic growth. Outdoor water, air and other pollution first worse and then improves as a country first experiences economic growth and development.
While many pollutants exhibit this pattern in the Kuznets environmental curve, peak pollution levels occur at different income levels for different pollutants, countries and time periods. John Tierney explains:
There are exceptions to the trend, especially in countries with inept governments and poor systems of property rights, but in general, richer is eventually greener.
As incomes go up, people often focus first on cleaning up their drinking water, and then later on air pollutants like sulphur dioxide.
As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy.
When I was living in Japan in the mid 1990s, they just completed a period of rapid operation of the Kuznets environmental curve. I was told by my professors at Graduate School that in the 1960s, cities and prefectures welcomed polluting industries because of the better paid jobs they offered. At that time, shipping companies used like to go to Tokyo because the pollution in Tokyo Bay was so bad that it would clean all the barnacles off their ships. That made them sail faster.
Japanese incomes and wages doubled over the course of the 1960s. The Japanese voter was now prepared to support stricter pollution standards and environmental controls.
In the early 1970s, the ruling LDP stole the long-standing environmental policies of their opponents in a big crack down on pollution because the country could now afforded them.
Plenty of developing countries are democracies now. Their people could demand through the ballot box higher environmental standards and clean tap water but they don’t because of its cost to economic development.
All in all, Italy and Greece are a dog of a place to enforce a contract. The long-suffering taxpayer is better off paying taxes in Greece than in Italy! Not surprisingly, trading across borders is the greatest strength in doing business in the PIGS. The European Union does have some benefits.
Figure 2: Doing Business rankings, Greece and Italy, 2014
All in all, Italy and Greece are equally bad places to do business and Italy is much worse when it comes to taxes. About the only saving graces of Italy is the registration of property and the protection of minority interests in companies.
Figure 3: Doing Business rankings, Spain and Portugal, 2014
I had an unnerving near miss at my local roundabout tonight with a bike as I was turning left. The bicycle appeared out of nowhere on my right in the middle of the roundabout as I glanced of the left to check again while turning so I crash stopped.
The bike had a light at the front but wasn’t visible to me until it was halfway into the roundabout when I glanced of the right again. The bike rider was going into that roundabout at a good speed against a wall of car lights behind it, so it was impossible to see it until it was close to the door of my car because of the background of car lighting after dark.
Bike riders have an overinflated self-perception of their visibility at night. Not surprisingly, more accidents happen during peak hours when drivers think motorists can see them when they cannot.
Even on an empty road, bicycles are not easy to see at night – certainly there not as perceived as quickly as cars. Bicycles are a much more dangerous transport mode than driving a car.
A recent study found the bicycle lighting is overrated as a method of making bikes more conspicuous – perceptions of visibility do not necessarily match reality:
The presence of a bicycle light, whether static or flashing, did not enhance the conspicuity of the bicyclist; this may result in bicyclists who use a bicycle light being overconfident of their own conspicuity at night.
Consider this thought experiment. Suppose bicycles have never been invented until tonight. The business case for allowing them on to the road is as follows:
Certain pedestrians should be allowed to share the road with cars as long as these pedestrians travel quickly on a metal contraption that is slower than cars, but still allows them to move relatively quickly;
These fast moving pedestrians are near invisible in rear-view mirrors;
These fast moving pedestrians should be allowed on the road at night when their visibility is poor against an every-varying contrast of a moving landscape;
These pedestrians moving quickly at night on the road are overconfident in the extent to which drivers perceive their presence against a moving landscape; and
Older drivers are 50% less likely to perceive the presence of a bike with lights and illumination at night than are younger drivers.
Would that business case pass under the precautionary principle championed by environmentalists, many of whom are bicyclists? Would that business case pass under normal cost benefit analysis? I say no. Bicycles at night must go.
Not only have the New Zealand top 1% been pretty miserable at increasing their share of incomes, hardly any change since 1990 and not much before that, the top 1% allowed inequality in both consumption and disposable income to actually fall since 1990 as shown by Treasury analysis published today.
Joan Robinson was on to this in the 1940s when she said the battle cry of Marxists would have to change from the 1848 version “rise up ye workers, rise up for you have nothing to lose but your chains” to “rise up ye workers, rise up for you have nothing to lose but the prospect of a suburban home and a motorcar”.
Today that battle cry of the Marxist revolution would have to be “rise up ye workers rise up for you have nothing to lose but your iPhone and your air points”. As Joan Robinson observed in the 1940s, that’s not much of a basis for a revolutionary movement.
Rock/pop star mortality increases relative to the general population with time since fame. Increases are greater in North American stars and those with solo careers.
Relative mortality begins to recover 25 years after fame in European but not North American stars. Those reaching fame from 1980 onwards have better survival rates.
For deceased stars, cause of death was more likely to be substance use or risk-related in those with more adverse childhood experiences.
Those reaching fame from 1980 onwards have better survival rates.
For deceased stars, cause of death was more likely to be substance use or risk-related in those with more adverse childhood experiences.
The best-selling book on economics in the 20th century was probably Free to Choose, the 1980 defense of free markets by Milton and Rose Friedman. It contained a chapter entitled, “Who Protects the Worker?” In it, the authors highlighted the tremendous improvement in the working conditions and living standards of workers from the Industrial Revolution onward. What, they inquired rhetorically, accounted for this? The Friedmans suggested “labor unions” and “government” as the likely top two answers to any poll taken on this subject.
One of the nation’s leading experts on the subject of risk and safety is W. Kip Viscusi, long an economics professor at Harvard, Duke and Vanderbilt universities and now affiliated with the Independent Institute. In an essay on “Job Safety” for the Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics, Viscusi wrote: “Many people believe that employers do not…
The Empire State building is dedicated in NYC. Here's a cool construction photo of the building, May 1st, 1931. http://t.co/map6v6A5dI— Classic Pics (@classicepics) May 30, 2015
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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