California is the world’s fifth-largest supplier of food and its agriculture uses 80% of the state’s water.
Source: The Economics of California’s Drought – The Atlantic
Source: California’s Next Megadrought Has Already Begun – Slate
The jobs picture has changed profoundly since the 1970s. This map shows how those changes played out across the country.
Source: Map: The Most Common* Job In Every State : Planet Money : NPR
This map is going to look very different in 20 years, and that may be a rough transition…
Source: The Case Against Patents – Journal of Economic Perspective [Volume 27, Number 1—Winter 2013—Pages 3–22], by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine
The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless productivity is identified with the number of patents awarded—which, as evidence shows, has no correlation with measured productivity. This disconnect is at the root of what is called the “patent puzzle”: in spite of the enormous increase in the number of patents and in the strength of their legal protection, the US economy has seen neither a dramatic acceleration in the rate of technological progress nor a major increase in the levels of research and development expenditure.
…
Unfortunately, the political economy of government-operated patent systems indicates that such systems are susceptible to pressures that cause the ill effects of patents to grow over time. The political economy pressures tend to benefit those who own patents and are in a good position to lobby for stronger patent protection, but disadvantage current and future innovators as well as ultimate consumers.
The longer one lurks in the Internet underground, the more difficult it becomes to ignore the harsh reality that for nearly every legitimate online business there is a cybercrime-oriented anti-business.
Source: Service Drains Competitors’ Online Ad Budget — Krebs on Security
I really like the term “anti-business” to describe businesses whose sole “product” is undermining other businesses’ business models and/or the free market or society more generally.
The United States achieved a 2.0 percent average annual growth rate of real GDP per capita between 1891 and 2007. This paper predicts that growth in the 25 to 40 years after 2007 will be much slower, particularly for the great majority of the population. Future growth will be 1.3 percent per annum for labor productivity in the total economy, 0.9 percent for output per capita, 0.4 percent for real income per capita of the bottom 99 percent of the income distribution, and 0.2 percent for the real disposable income of that group.
Source: The Demise of U.S. Economic Growth: Restatement, Rebuttal, and Reflections