It seems that US GDP always seems higher than European GDP. A fact that US pundits always seem to crow about. It seems that there may be a reason for this (other than the fact that the US is a dynamic environment to work in). As Philip Greenspun reports on his blog, if health and education are privatized (as they are in the US), then there are some additional monetary of this reflected in the GDP numbers that are excluded in countries with socialized health and education programmes. A conclusion that Philip attributes to Piketty.
What's in your honey, honey?
I just read this fascinating article from Food Safety News about honey. I had no idea that honey was such a dirty business!
Apparently over 75% of honey sold in US grocery stores isn't strictly "honey". It's been "ultra-filtered", a process that removes the natural pollen from the honey. A process whose only purpose appears to be to disguise the origin of the honey.
Prison versus Princeton
I saw this great info-graphic on The Atlantic comparing the costs of prison in the US with Princeton University.
Detroit - Ground Zero for Economic Collapse
Here is a video showing how badly Detroit has been affected by the collapsing housing market. Towards the end of the video you can see some amazing mansions in the worst-hit areas of Detroit that you can supposedly buy at a massive discount.
Social Collapse - Best Practices
Hmmm.... first I read this transcript from a speech by Dmitry Orlov entitled "Social Collapse - Best Practices", and then I saw on Boing Boing the post How are you coping with Collapse-Anxiety?
The first post describes what might happen if the US collapses in the same way economically as the USSR did in the 1990's. It then goes on to making recommendations about what to focus on - essentially food, transportation, shelter and security. I thought it was fascinating because although I have been thinking for a number of years that the economic situation was going to get bad, I didn't envision quite a collapse of that order of magnitude. As the crisis continues however, the possibility suddenly seems to become credible.
I found the comments interesting in the Boing Boing post. It seems as though quite a number of people were actually starting to find themselves in situations reminiscent of those described in the first post - primarily from posters in the US. Scary.
US Public Debt
[caption id="attachment_116" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="US Public Debt from 2006 until 30 Sep 2008"]
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