Climate and Weather


is from pages 88-89 of Arnold Kling’s splendid 2016 book, Specialization and Trade: A Re-introduction to Economics:


[Jesse] Ausubel points out that even as farm output and overall population have increased, use of water in the United States has actually declined since 1970. That change reflects greater efficiency in farming. (Ask your friends who proudly “buy local” whether they know how much water their local farmers used compared with the distant farmers from the supermarket imports produce.)

….

Generally speaking, in a market economy, the combination of incentives and human ingenuity has permitted the human population to grow with a reduction in the rate of resource use. By selling books in digital format, online retailer Amazon is letting us read more while using less paper; Airbnb is giving us more places to sleep without building hotels; and iTunes is allowing us to listen to more music without manufacturing records. We are not only leaving future generations with more know-how and more tools of production, we are also leaving them with more wilderness, more forest, and more vegetation.


I haven't read the book yet. But I'm sure it addresses the fact that as the world gets richer we are having less kids too.
 
Bruddah IZ said:
And Espola is not having any more kids either.
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Maybe, maybe not.

0064photo.jpg


My grandmother is the little girl seated on the high chair. To the left is her father, about 63 in this picture, holding her little brother.
 
Bruddah IZ said:
Planned parenthood might be helpful.
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In those days (picture was taken in 1904), parents planned to have as many kids as possible. The six older ones had already grown up and moved out. The country had plenty of room for them.

Great-grandfather needed many hands to run that farm - the three people on the left and the man standing in the rear are hired help, according to the legend on the photo. His wife (the third after outliving two others) is the lady in the white blouse seated on the right.
 
espola said:
In those days (picture was taken in 1904), parents planned to have as many kids as possible. The six older ones had already grown up and moved out. The country had plenty of room for them.

Great-grandfather needed many hands to run that farm - the three people on the left and the man standing in the rear are hired help, according to the legend on the photo. His wife (the third after outliving two others) is the lady in the white blouse seated on the right.
Click to expand...
Thatʻs what I figured. Youʻre not running a farm I take it. If you were, youʻde have no time for me.
 
Bruddah IZ said:
Thatʻs what I figured. Youʻre not running a farm I take it. If you were, youʻde have no time for me.
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No desire for farming in my blood, outside of fruit trees and small vegetable gardens. My grandmother was smart enough to marry a non-farmer. He was a teamster who drove horses for lumbering and road construction, and she worked as a schoolteacher and town clerk. Of course, they still lived on a farm and raised dairy cattle, pigs, chickens, rabbits, etc in the horse barn, but it wasn't their real occupation. Then my father went to college to be a teacher, principal and superintendent, and my mother eventually got a night-school degree, so they had clean indoor jobs with scheduled days off. I took the hint.
 
espola said:
In those days (picture was taken in 1904), parents planned to have as many kids as possible. The six older ones had already grown up and moved out. The country had plenty of room for them.

Great-grandfather needed many hands to run that farm - the three people on the left and the man standing in the rear are hired help, according to the legend on the photo. His wife (the third after outliving two others) is the lady in the white blouse seated on the right.
Click to expand...
Really? No illegals, how did they ever get the crops harvested?
 
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