Archive for February, 2008
Spiked review essay
In: Uncategorized
29 Feb 2008Spiked has published a review essay by me on books which see affluence and consumerism as leading to mental illness.
Plane stupendous
In: Uncategorized
28 Feb 2008The newly opened airport in Beijing looks amazing. Its architects evidently describe it as “the biggest building on the world”. A comparison with London’s Heathrow airport is instructive. According to an article on the BBC website : “Beijing’s terminal is twice the size and about half the cost of Heathrow’s new Terminal Five, which is […]
- Tags: china, climate, development, progress
Valuable climate change site
In: Uncategorized
25 Feb 2008A valuable new website on climate change. Climate Debate Daily brings to gether key articles on the subject from, broadly speaking, two opposing perspectives. One column includes articles demanding “calls to action” – generally in favour of the mainstream consensus – while another provides links to “dissenting voices”. There are also numerousl links to both […]
- Tags: climate, environment
Global living standards are improving
In: Uncategorized
23 Feb 2008A new paper (PDF) by Andrei Shleifer, a professor of economics at Harvard, gives some useful statistics on the general rise in global living standards since 1980. To quote the introduction: “The last quarter century has witnessed remarkable progress of mankind. The world’s per capita inflation-adjusted income rose from $5400 in 1980 to $8500 in […]
- Tags: development, economics, inequality, progress
China’s short march
In: Uncategorized
19 Feb 2008Time magazine’s cover story (in the Asia and Europe editions) on “China’s short march” gives a vivid description of China in the midst of transformation from a rural nation to an urban one. In addition to the move from countryside to cities many millions of the newly affluent are moving to suburbs that surround China’s […]
- Tags: Asia, china, cities, environment, inequality
In defence of supermarkets
In: Uncategorized
17 Feb 2008Jay Ranyer has a good piece defending supermarkets in today’s Observer.
- Tags: consumption, food
China blogs
In: Uncategorized
17 Feb 2008I have come across a useful list of blogs on contemporary China.
Heartfield book on green capitalism
In: Uncategorized
17 Feb 2008James Heartfield has a new book out called Green Capitalism: manufacturing scarcity in an age of abundance. I have not even seen it yet but, judging by the quality of his articles and previous books, it should be excellent. It is available from his personal website.
- Tags: book, economics, environment
Galbraith review on Arts & Letters
15 Feb 2008The Arts & Letters Daily website has published a link to my spiked review on John Kenneth Galbraith as the “midwife of miserabilism”.
- Tags: media appearances, review, spiked
Debating American inequality
In: Uncategorized
11 Feb 2008Yesterday’s New York Times has an opinion piece by W Michael Cox and Richard Alm, two officials from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, pointing out that consumption inequality in America is far less than income inequality: “if we compare the incomes of the top and bottom fifths, we see a ratio of 15 to […]
- Tags: America, economics, inequality
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