Preppers

 Do you remember the TV series about the Preppers?  It was a very interesting series and it contained some very important lessons.  I will try to point out some in this blog.

When I first saw the Prepper series, I did not take it very seriously because the people seemed a little strange.  They believed that the world was going to end and very soon.  Some of the reasons seemed crazy, and many were.  The problem was that one needed to look a little deeper into what they were saying.

As strange as their reasons for the various end of world possibilities, they all seemed to have a common way that they were going to deal with the end of the world.  Actually they did not believe that the world was going to totally end.  They thought that some event was going to occur that would kill a very large percentage of the people on Earth, but some had a chance of survival.  What they wanted was to be one those few who had the possibility of survival. This was a common thread that went thru all most all of the Preppers.

Given the above, what did the Preppers do and why?  That is my key point and the lessons that I picked up from the Preppers.  Before I get into more detail about the Preppers, I am going to explore a possible end of world event.  How about the big flood where, according to the Bible, they built the giant boat to survive the giant flood.  First off how about this flood?  I think that it was caused by a natural lake up stream of the Bosporus where the water in the lake gradually kept going up for thousands of years until one day it got higher than its natural boundaries.  At that point the water started flowing over the land adjacent to the lake until it started cutting a river channel deeper and deeper.  It grew rapidly form a small trickle to a massive flood in just a few hours or days.  The people down stream who had lived safely along the river for centuries were suddenly in the middle of a giant flood.  The flood did all kinds of damage, but in a few days or weeks the water in the lake was all out and the river returned to its banks,  True, it might have killed thousands of people, but it was a one time event.

Now the question is how would you have prepared to deal with a end of the world event like this,  It is how the Preppers are preparing right now.  What is going to happen is an event like that that kills 90% of the people, but 10% are not going to be killed.  There is going to be all kinds of damage and you will die if you don/t have enough food.  Other people are going to survive too, but what if they have not prepared with food?  They are going to be desperate and are going to try to steal your food,  As part of your preparations, you are going to also have to prepare on how you are going to protect your food.  Now the other thing is that the end of world event will probably not last any longer than the flood above and if you can survive and protect yourself long enough, you and other lucky people like you will be the only ones left.  The others will be dead and thus you have to figure out how you will continue to survive in this new world situation,

Do you follow that>  Notice that they did not try to sand bag the flood from the river.  They prepared to survive.  Now when you really think about global warming, is it really any different?  I don't think so.  I do not think that actions now can stop global warming it is really true and we went over the tipping point years ago when the world/s population topped 6 or 7 billions.  Notice that the world/s population is over 8 billion.  It is like we jumped off a high cliff when the population topped 6 or 7 billions and the final crash will begin when our population tops 9 or 10 billion.  

What the USA and much of the world is doing is using up all of our food to help people in places who now can not feed themselves.  If we keep this up, we will not save them in the end, but we will kill ourselves and that is exactly what we are doing.  First we lower our own quality of life to help those who have been part of the over population.  We invite them to enter the USA and we feed them until we can no long feed them nor ourselves.  Who ends up surviving?  Countries like China who take care of themselves first.  What the USA is doing is committing suicide.  Don't you see that?  I know that you and I will be gone, but are you concerned about your children and grandchildren?  You should be if your really love them.

The Preppers figured this all out and all we have to do is to learn a lesson from them and act like most of them have been doing.  America first.  Didn't some one propose that?

Trends

I was watching the News on TV today  and all of the talking heads were bad mouthing the various trends that they were reporting on.  It kind of caught me off guard and that is the reason for this blog.

I do not know why, but many people see various trends as bad.  The really big one is global warming.  Since zero of the talking heads knows anything about probability, it is no wonder they shoot off their mouths without thinking.  As I looked deeper into what they were saying it came clear to me that these people had no idea what optimum was.  If the Earth is actually getting warmer then optimum must be where it is now or even cooler.  Otherwise getting warmer would be moving away fromnoptimum and that would be worse.  What do you think?

Another really big one is that we do not have enough workers and thus we should welcome immigrants.  Is that really true?  What is the optimum number or density of people here in the USA that would be optimum?  Apparently many people feel that we do not have enough.  It is my position that we have too many people at about 75 per square mile.  I guess places like central America at over a !,000 people per square mile is more optimum than our 75.

How about age of the workforce?  The trend historically has been that the USA work force was getting older and only recently has it started to trend the other way.  This begs the question of exactly what is the optimum age of our population.  It is now about 38.5 and it was, a few years ago, 39.5.  Canada's is about 41 and they have a higher median net worth, home ownership and income. I think that Japan's workforce is several years older than ours.  It is also very interesting that virtually all the countries who have the higher median age are also those who have the highest quality of life, net worth and income.

I used to work with a guy who really got on my nerves because when you said something, he would frequently respond by saying, "compared to what".  Isn't that what people should start doing when they shoot their mouths off about different trends?  It would be great if the news media would start doing that.

You could also look at the population of the Earth at one billion and growing.  Do we need more or less?  What is optimum?  Has anyone discussed that?  I don't think so.  Why not?  Is the problem that the people are not distributed correctly?  How long before we will not be able to produce enough food to support them?  Remember that back in about the 1,400's the average European was about 5 feet tall and Native Americans were almost a foot taller.  That was becasue the Europeans were starving back then.  Did you know that in Ireland girls had a difficult time getting pregnant because the were also starving.  They did not start to get their population boom until they got the potato form the New World.

Regarding global warming, I think it is good for me personally, but I am not sure about the median.  What do you think and :compared to what?"

Probability In Education

 I am an old guy who has been around for a while and it appears to me that one of the biggest and most important concept that is missing from our education system is the understanding of probability. I am not talking about being a card shark, but a concept that is basic to operating as a human in the real world.  In this blog I will develop my point.

Most people seem to understand that if you flip a coin that the chances of it ending up heads is the same as it ending up as tails, but is about where their understanding stops.  What if you asked them about the chances of the coin coming up heads twice in a row?  I know the answer.  They would draw a blank.  How about playing cards?  What if you asked a simple question like, "what are the chances of drawing a Spade to complete a flush if you already have four Spade cards?"  You could appear to complicate the situation by adding that there were four other players in the game.  My point is that these are very simple problems and over 95% of people would draw a blank and that is our problem.

I was just watching the news about a lady who had some form of brain cancer and was pregnant.  The doctor told the lady that she would die if she did not abort her baby so that he could give her the cancer treatment.  The lady rejected the doctor and had her normal baby and did not die.  What was the problem in this case?  The doctor saw things in terms of black and white or right and wrong when he should have been thinking in terms of probability and advice the lady on those terms rather than right or wrong.  Are you starting to see my point?

Look at our current situation with the Eucrain war.  You will hear things like, "If we don't stop Russia from taking Eucrain, then they will next take over Europe."  They say and believe this with 100% certainty when there are many reasons why this may not happen.  You could name a few, like.  What if Putin were to die suddenly?  What if the army or the country revolted against Putin?  What if the soldiers refused to fight?  You could go on and on with things that might happen that would stop the war or prevent Russia from expanding further.  Each one has a probability of greater than "zero" and it could be smakk, but the simple minded conclusion is clearly not 100%.

I will admit that the whole concept of probability can be complicated, but that is no reason to totally reject the concept.   

Root Cause

 What is the root cause of illegal immigration into the USA?  It is so simple that a child could easily understand the Root Cause.  I am not going to keep it a secret in this blog.

Here it is in plain english.  The Root Cause is:  :"The quality of life is better in the USA than the place where people immigrate from".  That is why they want to immigrate here. We could solve the problem like we have done with the banks.  We guard the banks and keep the robbers out.  If they rob the bank, we catch them and punish them.  We have an economy where most people do not need to rob the bank to get enough food or the have the morality not to break the law or the are fearful of being caught and punished.

We can't do much about the quality of life in those countries, but we could try to discourage the churches from promoting over breeding.   We could show them fear of punishment just like we do for banks.  Like bank robbing, we may not get it down to zero or "perfect", but we could get it to a level that was acceptable.  

The bottom line is that those countries where the illegal immigrants are coming from have to solve their own problem in their own countries.  If they want to continue to live in shit holes, so be it.  It is up to them and we should start focusing on the quality of life for legal US citizens for a change.  We need to be realistic.  There are a few things that we can change or improve and some we just can not.  We have to stop bing the blind do gooders that so many still want to be.

If you have another "root cause" I would like to hear it. 

Global Warming Screw Job

 I am so fed up with our government that I am becoming a radical and in this blog you will see why.

It is difficult to dig out many fact that one needs to make informed decisions about global warming and immigration, but I think that I may have stumbled onto some keu data.  It is from some group called "Center For Immigration Studies".  They have a lot of data and several blogs based on the data.  I am not totally sure about the quality of the data, but you can be the judge of that.

For some reason the communications about global warming always seems to leave out the impact of the number of people here on Earth.  Why is that?  We now have just over 8 billion people on Earth.  That is the most that there have ever been.  It is my opinion that the driver of global warming if there is actually such a think is (1) Quality of life (2) Number of people on Earth.  It is as simple as that.  

Think about this.  When there were many fewer people here on Earth and their quality of life was well below what it is today, there was no problem with global warming, but as the quality of life improved and the number of people here on Earth things changed.  Many thing have changed and that is very clear, but is there such a thing as actual global warming?  I am not sure and no one else is either.

Do you or did you ever watch a TV program called "Preppers"?  These are people who feel the world is going to come to an end in their life time.  They have all kinds of reason for why and how.  The common denominator of most of them is that it will happen rapidly and for that reason they have developed plans to deal with the situation.  They prepare in two ways.  (1) They want to be sure that they have food and water and thus do not starve. (2)  They know that many people will not prepare and will try to steal their food or kill them.  Because they feel this whole thing will play out rapidly, that they only need food for about a year or so and the means to protect themselves for a short period of time until most of the people who are not prepared will die off.  

The reason that I mention this story is that it clearly applies to the global warming concern.  The USA appears to be putting its resources into preventing global warming to the point that we will be broke and starving if it ever happens.  Other countries are getting richer just like the Preppers prepared themselves for the event.  Do you see that and do you understand what is happening.  In the end the USA will be so poor that we can not help any one.  Countries who have protected their economies will be able to squash us like a bug.

Now to my main point and that is population.  Most of you have so few facts that most of you are not in a position to see what is going on right around you.  Most have to "do gooder" mentality and want to give away their own and other people's money to save the world.  I don't want the quality of life to have to go down to save the world, I would much prefer to address population. I don't mean killing people, I mean "don't have them in the first place".  Like most problems I feel that you will get your most impact by focusing on the "tall tent poles" and what are they?  Population and those who are over breeding right now.  Who are they and what can we do about them.  Here is what I found and you will be very surprised with these number.  

If you look at the USA that you and your parents grew up in, well it is changing and the "tall tent pole" is breeding by immigrants both legal and illegal.  Most is by illegal immigrants because many of them have come here from countries that are already over crowded with population like over 1,000 people per square mile and median ages under 25.  Here is the data that I dug out. It is the worst states in terms of the percentage of births to immigrants legal and illegal.

California------------------35.7%

New York------------------30.4%

Massachusetts-------------27,3%

Nevada---------------------27.2%

Florida----------------------27.7%

USA-------------------------19.9%

How long do you think it will take before these states look to most Americans like foreign countries if they do not already.  Think of our schools?

I could go on, but I think that most of you get the message.  We don't need more people in the USA.  If the number goes down it will mean that we will have a higher quality of life and we will not cause more global warming.  We will have more of every thing per individual.  The pie could be smaller, but we would have a larger piece of pie and isn't that objective?

Pilot Ejected

 I just heard on the news that a pilot ejected out of a plane that cost the taxpayers over a hundred million dollars over a populated area.  This blog will explore this whole area of pilots ejecting out of planes.

If you look at our military since the Civil War, you will notice a big change.  In the Civil War the army would have several thousand men charge across an open field directly into cannon and rifle fire with many being killed on the way.  I have been to several of the Civil War battle grounds, like Gettysburg and have seen where thousands died in a afternoon. If you have not been there, you should. 

 War and battles today are much different.  The US military goes to great lengths to spare the lives of our soldiers, but that take care of some more than others.  I am talking about pilots compared to infantry men. I know that the military wants to fight by standing off with special weapons that can reach an invisible enemy without risking the soldier.  I think that a little of this type of thinking may be good, but it can be take too far and that is what I feel about pilots who can eject and thus destroy the expensive plane that us taxpayers work and paid taxes for.  I think we need to revisit the whole business of pilots ejecting.

In the case of this recent fighter that crashed and waisted over a hundred million dollars of taxpayer money is a good place to start.  Are there places, times and situations where it is best to eject?  Yes!  Are there similar situations where a pilot should not be allowed to eject?  Yes!  Now let's explore some of those different situations.  Here is just a few of the things that need to be considered (1) The cost of the plane (2) The location in terms of damage to people and property on the ground (3) The chances of the pilot being killed by ejecting (4) The chances of the plane and pilot surviving by not ejecting.  All these and more should be taken into account.  Think about this?

What if the plane was small or inexpensive or if  it was a hot air balloon?  Should the criterial be the same for all?  I don't think so.  What about a ship's captain who goes down with his ship? Should a pilot be allowed to eject over a big city like New York?  I don't think so.  What normally gets into the discussion is exactly how much is a life worth.  I think you have been challenged with that one a time or two, well I have.  Is the pilot's life more valuable than a grandmother on the ground?  That sort of thing.

Would the rules be different if it were a battle in war vs training some place.  I think so and you do too. What I am concerned about is that I do not see this discussion going on anyplace.  If it is and it does not include us taxpayers, then I do not have much confidence in the conclusion.

Here is another point.  What if the design of the plane did not even include an ejection system?  The plane would be a lot less complicated and lighter and thus could have a higher performance.  Would it be better to have more planes without ejection systems or fewer or more costly planes with ejection systems?  That is what we are talking about.  I know that the Russian march to the concept that "Quantity has a quality all of it's own".  I think that they have it right when it come to war and that is what we are talking about.  What would you think if the next time you are on a flight to New York City that the pilot ejected and allowed the plane with you and the other passengers crash?  Isn't that about the same thing we are talking about here?

Think about it and talk to some of you taxpayer friends and see what they think if they have even thought about it.

Illegals In Our Schools

 It is about time for us to wake up about our schools.  This blog will show you why.

First off, let's look at our colleges.  Us tax payers pay for them and we expect our tax money to be used to teach our kids.  Isn't that exactly what you think?  Well we do that for our college kids, so why not do it for all  of our kids?  That is the big question.  We all know that our kids are behind most young kids from around the world on reading, math and science.  I think that most of us know that to maintain our quality of life we will have to compete in a much more intellectual economy in the future.  Our current schools are not preparing our kids for the future right now, so why are we making the situation even worse?

Here is what we need to do right now.  Let's take care of the children of our citizens and that means for people who can vote.  If the parents of the kids can not vote, it has to be clear that they are not citizens or worthy of being a citizen.  Colleges do that now so what is the big deal?  That means that all of the children of these illegal immigrants can not go to our schools or they will have to pay extra like they do for college.  Here in the USA if you are from another state, you will have to pay out of state tuition to attend one of the colleges.  Why should it be any different for regular school kids>

The other thing that we need to change in the law is that just being born here does not automatically make you a citizen.  Many other countries don't automatically make you a citizen just because you popped out of your mother here in the USA.  If we would just wake up and take care of the USA citizens first, our quality of life would be a lot better and it would also save us money in the process.  I do not understand why the citizens of the USA are so stupid when it comes to this very simple problem. Do you?

Comprehensive Is Impossible

 If you were lessoning to the Republican debate, then you heard one person call the error of considering "impossible" alternatives as legitimate.  I will explain in more detail in this blog.

How many times have you heard your favorite politician answer a serious question with. "What is needed is a comprehensive solution"?  It has to be thousands of times.  What they are doing is tricking you because they know that most of you are too stupid to understand decision making.  I used to teach decision theory in a major university so I know a little about the process.  Let me explain.

Here are the basics of decision making.  First, you need an objective and second you need a list of all the alternatives.  The final step is how to select the best alternative.  That might include all kinds of calculations and statistical data. but if you have a complete list of alternatives, the best one is some place on that list.  Now, where do people go wrong?  They leave off possible alternatives either on purpose or because they are not aware of them.  The error politicians try to pull on you is to include alternatives that are impossible like "comprehensive" and many of you fall for that one and even try to select it from the list.

If you followed the above, I hope that you are not tricked by slick politicians who keep using the  comprehensive alternative argument when it is clearly not an honest alternative.  Notice that very young children and people with mental problems tend to go for the comprehensive or impossible alternative and I hope that you are not one of them. 

Doctors and Bayes Therom

 This blog is about my total frustration with modern doctors and their lack of understanding of Thomas Bayes.

If you do not know about Thomas Bayes. then go look it up.  He was a minister back in the 1700's who was trying to prove there was a God when he stumbled onto one of the most significant concepts in probability.  Today, I am going to take out my frustration with actual doctors of today.

Several weeks ago I bumped into a sticking out board in my shop and it hit right on my ribs on my right side.  It really hurt at the time and I got a big burse from it.  It stayed sore for a couple of weeks and I noticed later that there was a small lump below the skin. so I went to the doctor.

He examined it and found that it was below my right breast so he scheduled me for a mama gram.  Men don't normally get mana grams, but he wanted one.  I went in and had the mama gram and to my surprise, they wanted me to also have an ultra sound.  That is where I started thinking that "this was enough".  I asked to speak with the person who was reading the mama gram and I did.  He was a few hundred miles away and only saw the images on his computer.  I challenged the need for a ultra sound. He explained that there was no involvement of either of my breasts and that he was not sure about the small lump.  I then explained that I had bumped the spot and that I was 83 years old.  I jumped to the bottom line and asked if he knew the cost of these tests and if they were worth it.  He said that he did not know what the cost was.  At that point, I challenged how he could determine the worth if he did not know the cost.  His response was that it was the "standard protocol".  I then asked if the protocol was the same for a 25 year of and an 83 years old and he said "yes".  He detected that he was not speaking with some simpleton and went on to explain that the additional ultra sound did not have a good chance  of explaining exactly what the lump was.  At that point, I called off any further testing,  He then agreed with me.

Can you now see why medical costs in the USA are so high while we are still far down the list when it comes to life expectancy?  Next time you deal with a medical doctor, ask them if they are familiar with "Bayes Theron".  If they plead ignorance, get another doctor.  You could even ask them how much the visit or any tests will cost and if they do not know, get another doctor.

It is a very sad situation that we all find ourselves in and it will only change if we start demanding it..  

"What" and "Why" in China

 I have been on this what and why kick for a while here in the USA, why not China?  This blog will build on recent data from the Wall Street Journal.

According the WSJ China may be in economic trouble.  They showed all  kinds of data along with their interpretation.  A couple of areas that got my attention were the shift of workers from agriculture and the excess of well educated young people.  It seems that many new young college graduates are finding it difficult to find a job.  As you might have expected there has been a very disproportionate number of technical workers in the growing social computer sector.  It has been the same here in the USA.  What these new numbers point out to me is how "dynamic" and "changing" every thing is in China as it is here in the USA.

Take the shift from agriculture.  We had the same thing here and it was great for the economy just like it was for the USA.  The economy tapped in to the excess intellect that was being waisted on the farm, but that well may be running dry as it has here in the USA.  Like the USA, China has a similar statistical distribution of intellect.  Darwin only made so much and he did not play favorites.

Here is the other area.  China has similar schools and colleges just like we have, but the kids work much harder than ours.  In China the hard work by their students assures that they learn "what" and are able to regurgitate it back on the test just like here, only they do it better.  The end product is that China does not have any more "why" students than the rest of the world.  Like the economies of most of the world, China's is changing just as fast and the "what" people just can not keep up.  Like all economic rushes, they bottom out like a mine or well that goes dry.  Now what?  A "what" person who was prepared for a special event or job becomes obsolete. 

Look at manufacturing.  China came on the scene that was already set and was changing very slowly.  They had an excess of people who were hungry for work.  All they had to do was to organized and set things in motion to take advantage of the Gold rush that they could see in front of them.  You know the history of how things went.  I know that you have the ability to look into the rear view mirror, but can you see the future?  Did you predict the boom in China?  I do not think so.

Here is another thing about the free enterprise system and that is each person is looking at the situation and making individual decisions about what to do.  It is true that most only look a short distance ahead, but the government is so clumsy that even if they are able to look farther ahead, their advantage is canceled out by their clumsiness.  It is worse for a country like China.  What if they got onto the Global Warming band wagon?  If China wants to move ahead, they will have to shift away from central planning and the communist type of system and I do not think that they are capable to do that.

It is interesting when you start to compare China with the USA from the point of education and the statistical distribution of intellect in our populations.  Combine that with an increase in the rate of change and depth of inter relationships of all the variables that impact us. Think about it.

Energy and Global Warming

 In this blog, I am going to try to show you how energy and global warming are tied together.

In my last blog, I tried to trace the growth in quality of life to how us humans harnessed energy to improve our quality of life.  At first it was with human muscle power and then later to electrical and nuclear power'  During all this time our need for more and more energy was driven by the growth in the number of humans here on Earth as well as a higher quality of life.

There is one very simple rule of physics and that is that energy can not be created, only transformed. That means that the original muscle power can only be transformed.  If nothing changed here on Earth except that the population grew to where it is now, we would need the same amount of energy from some place to produce the quality of life that we have.  That means we would be generating the same amount of greenhouse gas that we do today.  People would have to eat more food to generate the muscle power that would be needed and they would be generating more waste and breath out more carbo dioxide.  

Mother nature wants to keep things in balance and us humans want to play against mother nature for our own selfish benefits. Did you ever wonder where all the energy came from that produced oil and coal and the energy that is stored in these two fuels?  It came from some  place and now us humans want to get it back and use it to improve our quality of life.

If you are a normal human then you want some kind of free lunch.  I am sorry that there is no free lunch no mater what you might think or what some politician has told you.  We are all subject to mother natures' laws, like it or not.  The only variable that us humans control is "breeding".  Aa long as the total number of us humans keeps increasing we all have a problem.  The other is quality of life.  It is a trade off.  If we want to keep or improve our quality of life, we have to reduce the number of humans here on Earth.  Again, there is no free lunch! 

Life Is Dynamic

This blog is all about economics and life at the same time.  It is a different way of looking at things.

First off, think about this.  We as individuals are part of a gigantic system that is changing all the time. Many of the elements affect us even if we don't know it.  Some things change faster than others as does their affect on us.  These elements also affect other elements in the system.  All are linked, some more than others.  If you think about it, that is the game that we are playing and the game is changing all the time. Now that you have a flavor of what I am talking about, let's get into some details that you might be more familiar with.  As hard as I try, I can only scratch the surface so bear with me.

I said that this is about economics and it is.  In a prior blog I stressed the need for some kind of objective to judge how things are affecting you or the average person.  For this blog, I have chosen the quality of life for the median person in the USA.  I know that is a little limited, but what other choices do I have if I don't want to write a book here?  Next we need to flesh out some kind of definition of quality of life and for that I have chosen pay, earnings or productivity.  We are not gatherers who let mother nature produce things that we go out and collect.  We have to produce those things of value and that is the challenge of economic systems.  In this blog, I accept that the free enterprise does that the best, but may need a little control if it really works long term

As I said at the beginning, this whole thing is dynamic, things are changing and we need to recognize that fact.  Most of us measure the size and growth of the economy in terms of the GNP in constant dollars and I will also do that here.  I go one step farther and normalize the data in terms of the individual and measure the GNP in terms of the size of the pie each individual gets and thus the size for that median person.  With me so far?  Next, how about those factors that keep changing?

First we need to look a the history of trends in how people actually produced value.  Historically it was with muscle power.  That trended to domestic animals, water power, steam power and finally electric power.  There are all kinds of pieces to this, but let's just accept those. Their impact was to increase the value of what a human could produce and thus the quality of life increased.  Note also that most humans could participate while at the same time they had more intellect than was needed.

Next, just an example.  People were weaving cloth which consumed many hours and children could also do it and did.  Along came a smart person and the water wheel and he invented the powered loom. He even invented a system where there was a stored program in the loom that could do different designs.  This process kept going and people shifted to producing energy from coal and oil to run these machines.  They prospered because of cheap energy as well as intellect on how to use it better and better. Even transportation benefitted with rail roads and steam ships.  Location became less and less important.  Think about modern container ships and their impact on location?

All this time Darwin had produced a human population that had enough intellect to balance things out. Once it was supplemented with a written language and printed books, it was off to the races.  They even invented the telephone, computers and the internet.  This allowed the capture of a higher and higher percentage of the human intellect while at the same time the human's physical ability became less and less valuable. 

Wait a minute.  How about energy?  We still need more and more, but some human got the idea that it was putting carbon into the air and changing climate so they limited or increased the cost of energy. What do you think happened?  The positive trend stopped and things moved much slower.  But wait. the growth rate of humans on Earth did not stop, it kept growing.  It looks like the size of pie will slow or go backwards.  

If you look at the individual contributions to GNP and specifically at the median and the average, you will find a very interesting relationship.  In the USA the median is much lower than the average.  So what? A few very productive people can easily raise the average but have zero impact on the median while those of low intellect produce much less or even zero.

Education is only part of the answer.  Historically an early investment in education could pay back over a life time of work.  That has all changed with the rate of change of the elements of the economy.  You only have to look at the number of jobs a senior citizen has held compared to a person under 40 today. It is harder and harder to pay back the investment in education today than 50 years ago.  If you look at education today, it is based on history of what worked in the past.  Tech training is almost dead in terms of its value today because the person would have to be retrained again and again.

I did a blog on education where I divided it into "how and what" and "why".  In that blog I showed that the "how and what" was a poor investment because it was so short lived and thus difficult to ever pay back.  "Why" on the other hand "why" was more dynamic and could adjust to changes or trends.  Remember the math word problem example?  I think you know what I mean.

How about our economic system with the free enterprise system?  If that goes to the limit as it appears to be going now, we will end up with a few multibillionaires who will raise the average and leave millions near the much lower median.  How we deal with that, I do not know at this time.

The final trend is the growth in our population.  To maintain the size of the pie for each person is getting more and more difficult as we all know.  One good measure of this bad trend is the median age of different countries population. Given the war on energy, there is no way that us humans can continue to allow the world wide population growth if we have any concern about the median quality of life.  This is just another trend that has reached its limit and I do not know what will happen as other factors impacting quality of life also tend to their limits

Good luck to you old folks who have finally been able to observer these trends and the dynamics of life..

 

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