biffvernon wrote:or the consumption of poetry readings, string quartet recitals ......?
These things have always been a measure of the food wealth of societies. In order to have time for this and the production of ornaments societies have had to have spare time available from the production/collection of food. It will continue to be so in the future.
Very true. But we are well into the food surplus regime. I think in the UK we spend less than 10% of our income on food - leaving 90% for the poetry etc.
If those figures were reversed there would still be song and dance.
kenneal wrote:I haven't read many books on Economics because, in my dim and distant past at school, economics was the last refuge for those who were no good at maths/science or arts/languages and that has biased me, possibly unfairly, towards economists. That bias has been reinforced by the mainstream economic belief that constant growth is possible in a finite environment.
Huh . I got a Grade A Economics A Level, but gave up maths because the teacher was so crap that I wasn't getting anywhere. Interestingly I would certainly have failed Economics with the teacher I had in my first year, but passed because we had a brilliant one in the second year. So it's not all about whether the student is good or bad at certain subjects. My other A Level was Physics, and I don't believe in constant growth .
I got a grade B in Economics A level and I have an honours degree in Business Studies.
Which is probably why I don't have a great deal of respect for either.
The other week I met a girl who had been in our economics class at school, I hadn't seen her in over 20 years. Turns out she is now the local police inspector. Not sure if it's possible to draw any conclusions from that though.
The former chancellor takes aim at the IoS and says that the debate on global warming is not a question of 'goodies and baddies'.
<snip>So it was with sorrow as well as anger that I read the disgraceful story splashed all over the front and second pages of last week's issue, headed "Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers", clearly implying that those think-tanks that question any part of the conventional climate change wisdom are tainted by their dependence on the oil industry. This fell well below the standards first set by Andreas, and which I had come to expect from The Independent. </snip>
As a result of this post I wrote the following to the Editor of the Independent
Dear Sir
When talking about "Climategate", Lord Lawson lied on BBC's Question Time program about what the government's Chief Scientist had said about Global Warming. Lord Lawson stated that the Chief Scientist had denied climate change. The Chief Scientist had in fact said that nothing that had happened in the Climategate scandal undermined the basic science of Global Warming. Lord Lawson should now publicly acknowledge that what he said on the television about the Chief Scientist was wrong and would have misled people.
This slip, if it was a slip and not a deliberate effort to mislead, is as bad as the Climategate "slips" and should be acknowledged as such.
Such slips are par for the course for "professional" climate change deniers.
JohnB wrote:My other A Level was Physics, and I don't believe in constant growth .
I have an A level in Economics, an MBA and a degree in Physics and I'm saying that constant growth forever is not only impossible but that those who say that the economy is based on it are spouting without having checked the literature.
kenneal wrote:
If it is not so, please enlighten us all, Fifth.
The onus is on you. You stated that the economy is based on constant growth. YOU prove it.
Yeast in a bottle eventually kill each other off.
fifthcolumn wrote:I have an A level in Economics, an MBA and a degree in Physics and I'm saying that constant growth forever is not only impossible but that those who say that the economy is based on it are spouting without having checked the literature.
And a dearth of common sense.
The economy is based on a series of cycles which must keep growing, which equates to constant growth.
Last edited by kenneal - lagger on 16 Feb 2010, 21:55, edited 1 time in total.
. I got a Grade A Economics A Level, but gave up maths because the teacher was so crap that I wasn't getting anywhere. Interestingly I would certainly have failed Economics with the teacher I had in my first year, but passed because we had a brilliant one in the second year. So it's not all about whether the student is good or bad at certain subjects. My other A Level was Physics, and I don't believe in constant growth 
.
