Mr Huston's family is now legal and can eat Thanksgiving dinner in peace...

Mr. Huston's family will no longer have to break the law for Thanksgiving dinner  (if they happen to be in Georgia)....

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Georgia is one of the top 10 states in the country in deer-related auto accidents. Now, drivers can get some just desserts – or dinner. The Senate gave final passage to SB 474, which allows drivers to keep any bear or deer that they might run over. The so-called Road Kill Bill, carried by Sen. Don Thomas of Dalton, passed 47-0. “This is hot of the grill,” Thomas said, tongue planted firmly in cheek. “And I urge you to support it.” According to the bill, “Any person may take possession of native wildlife which has been killed by a motor vehicle.”---Source: Division of Labour

Would you buy a $9 Million dollar house that will be soon underwater? Did not think so, but someone did...

If you thought that because of climate change the oceans will rise and consume a good portion of the coastlines, would you buy a $9 million dollar house/property on the coastline?  Seems like a bad investment OR you dont really believe that the coastlines are going to become part of the ocean anytime soon OR you believe you have solved the problem.  I am not questioning the validity of climate change, but do question the motives of self-appointed gurus of any sort...I am guessing that leaders of the environmental movement do not approve of this either, so I dont believe I am being partisan on this issue....Cant people ACTUALLY lead by example?? Just askin'...

""It is reported that former Vice President Al Gore just purchased a villa in Montecito, California for $8.875 million. The exact address is not revealed, but Montecito is a relatively narrow strip bordering the Pacific Ocean. So its minimum elevation above sea level is 0 feet, while its overall elevation is variously reported at 50ft and 180ft.At the same time, Mr. Gore prominently sponsors a campaign and award-winning movie that warns that, due to Global Warming, we can expect to see nearby ocean-front locations, such as San Francisco, largely under water. The elevation of San Francisco is variously reported at 52ft up to high of 925ft. There being very little reason to suppose that the Pacific Ocean would (or could) rise much less in Montecito than in San Francisco, it follows that Mr. Gore just paid nearly $9 million for property, which according to his professed beliefs, will likely soon be literally under water and hence worthless both as a residence and for resale""....(Click HERE for rest of the story)

Video animation of the Oil Rig "Malfunction"...Only 1 minute long

I can't vouch for the technical aspects of this video, but it gives an animated view of what happened with the oil platform...

Nice Graphic on the Costs of BP Oil Spill...

Cost & Effects of The BP Oil Spill

Mr Gore must have read my blog post---Can't be out-done by Gisele---Buys an even BETTER HOUSE!!

Sorry, I just can't resist this one...(previous post about Gisele HERE)

From LA TIMES:  Al Gore, Tipper Gore snap up Montecito-area villa

""Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have added a Montecito-area property to their real estate holdings, reports the Montecito Journal.  The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.""

Want a raise at work? Then "Be a Complement and not a Substitute"...

Well worth a read if you are wondering how you can develop additional leverage at work to get a raise or to get ahead---Excellent advice from an Excellent AP Economics teacher!!

How To Use Economics To Get A Raise---By Mike Fladlien

"Be a Complement Not a Substitute"
Complementary goods are like a right shoe and a left shoe. One shoe simply isn’t sufficient. You need both shoes. If the job you’re doing can be done by a machine or done by cheaper labor, then you need to find a way to become part of the process. For example, if an answering machine can replace a receptionist, then when the machine becomes cheaper, it’ll be used in place. The receptionist has to build client relationships and answer the phone. In other words the receptionist has to be able to do the work that a machine cannot. A receptionist can also build value for the attorney, by rescheduling clients who miss appointments so that the boss doesn’t have an empty space on his/her calendar. The receptionist might call ahead to confirm appoints. This is work that a machine cannot easily do. 

Differentiate
A worker must differentiate herself from other workers. It’s not enough to be able to do the job. A worker  musst add something extra. Perhaps Juanita has specialized knowledge of accounts receivable software that can’t be duplicated or outsourced. Perhaps she has knowledge of contract law that can’t be easily learned.
When Juanita works with clients perhaps they comment about the personal attention that makes them feel special.""

A short yet excellent explanation of a Carbon Tax to reduce carbon emissions. A policy alternative to Cap and Trade

A short yet excellent explanation of a Carbon Tax to reduce carbon emissions. A policy alternative to Cap and Trade...From EconomicsBlog:

"""The production of carbon dioxide is widely held to contribute to social / environmental problems such as global warming. This carbon pollution is a negative externality. It is a cost imposed on the whole of society and not just the individual who consumes a certain product. e.g. if you drive a car, the external costs are felt by everyone else.
Because certain carbon intensive industries create negative externalities, the social cost of production is greater than the private cost.
In a free market, these negative externalities are not included in the price leading to overconsumption and social inefficiency. We can say there is a missing market, because the external cost of carbon emission is ignored.

Diagram to show Welfare loss of Negative Externality

The Purpose of A Carbon tax

The purpose of a carbon tax is to internalise the externality. What this means is that the final price of the good should include the external cost and not just the private cost.
In theory, the tax should equal the external cost. Therefore, the price consumers pay will be the social cost.
Demand will fall and the new equilibrium will be socially efficient because at this output, the marginal social cost equals the marginal social benefit.

Diagram to Show Carbon Tax

Revenue Neutral

In theory a carbon tax should be revenue neutral. This means the tax raised from taxing carbon emissions can be used to reduce other taxes. There should be no overall increase in the tax burden.


Problems of Carbon Tax
•Production may shift to countries with no or lower carbon taxes.
•Cost of administrating the tax.
•Difficult to know the level of external cost and how much the tax should be.
•Possibility of tax evasion. Higher taxes may encourage firms to hide carbon emissions.
•If demand is price inelastic, the tax may have to be very high to reduce demand significantly.
•Consumers dislike new taxes and often don’t believe that they will be ‘revenue neutral’. This is not an economic argument, but it is a political reality and explains why it is often difficult to implement."""

Bee rustlers---How do they get the lasso around their necks???

From BBC: 'Bee rustlers' sting Japanese apiarists

""Japanese bee-keepers have been warned to be on their guard, following a spate of hive thefts.
The price of honeybees has doubled in recent years after a ban on imports. Police suspect a gang of specialist thieves is stealing honeybees to order. In central Shizuoka prefecture, eight hives of 60,000 bees were taken in a single night from five separate farms. The area is well known for strawberry growing and farmers need honeybees to propagate their crops. The insects have been in short supply in Japan after imports were banned for several years to try to prevent the spread of parasites. The price of a swarm has doubled to more than $400 (£260). The Japan Beekeepers and Honey Association says more than two million of the insects were stolen in 2009, and thefts are becoming more frequent. The organisation has urged its members to be alert, but has admitted it is difficult to protect hives around the clock on remote farms. ""

How do you like your wine capped? Cork or plastic?

From WSJ: Show Stopper: How Plastic Popped the Cork Monopoly

A terrific example of "creative destruction" at work, in the wine cork business, of all places.  Creative destruction is a necessary component for innovation and the continued development of new products.  We must be willing to let go of goods that have been rendered less useful (NOT necessarily useless) though technological advancement and/or changes in consumer preferences. Seems as though there is a challenge to a centuries old "tradition"...

""The story of how Nomacorc and other stopper upstarts broke the centuries-old cork monopoly is a lesson in how innovation, timing and hustle combined to exploit an opening in a once airtight market. It shows that any dominant industry can be vulnerable to competition, especially if it grows complacent about its position.""

 It is a market-oriented cleansing process that is not without costs, however, such as the workers in the out-innovated businesses who lose their jobs. Creative destruction also serves to keep the attention of the dominant industry.  They cannot become complacent or a competitor/upstart will chip away at their market dominance. 

""Unknown to most American wine drinkers, the plant's owner, Nomacorc LLC, has quietly revolutionized the 400-year-old wine-cork industry. Since the 1600s, wine has been bottled almost exclusively with natural cork, a porous material that literally grows on trees in Portugal, Spain and other Mediterranean lands. But over the past 10 years, an estimated 20% of the bottle stopper market has been replaced by a new technology—plastic corks that cost between 2 and 20 cents apiece. More than one in 10 full-sized wine bottles sold worldwide now come with a Nomacorc plug, while another 9% or so come from other plastic cork makers. Screw caps took another 11% of the market.  "We infuriated the cork industry," says Marc Noel, Nomacorc's chairman.""

I don't drink wine (or any other alcoholic beverage) so I don't really have an opinion, but I am sure the debate rages among oenophiles (is that the right word?)...But I do love Creative Destruction---gives me warm fuzzies. Such as I would imagine wine would... :)


Related story on the world-wide wine glut..

Business Spending Propels Recovery---Nice Graphic showing C + I + G + N(x)...

A MOST excellent interactive graphic from the WSJ  (click HERE for original story) on the latest Gross Domestic Product report...Just put the cursor over a particular bar and you will see that sectors contribution (or detraction) from GDP...Conveniently set up to show C + I  + G + N(x)!!  An economics teachers dream!!

AMAZING Apartment Transformation--377 sq ft into a mansion!!!

Increased Investment expenditures ('I") in Developing countries means an Increase in Exports for US...

Caterpillar bringing back 9,000 laid-off workers worldwide

"Developing" economies are getting ahead of the the so-called developed countries (US, Europe, Japan, etc) in terms of economic expansion (GDP growth).  Businesses in some of these countries are replacing capital goods and buying new capital goods in anticipation of an eventual pick up in business from the US and Europe (China and other Asian economies are already steaming ahead, and are major customers for American producers such as Caterpillar).  The US STILL has the Comparative Advantage in the production of medium to large scale construction equipment of all types.

""Exports of heavy equipment to Asia and Latin America are putting employees back to work at Caterpillar Inc. factories in Illinois....The growth in emerging economies is fueling demand for commodities. That is stoking sales of Caterpillar’s big mining trucks made in Decatur and large tractors made in East Peoria. Workers already have been recalled to those factories.""

These immediate purchases increase their domestic spending-- "I" (for Investment Spending) in the GDP equation ("C+I+G+N(x)" ) and, in turn, increases Aggregate Demand.  This is a good thing for them because it creates/ressurects dormant jobs TODAY.  It is a good thing for the US because it puts idle production capacity back to work and "brings back" jobs to the factories...

""By the end of the year, the heavy-equipment maker expects to rehire 9,000 of the 19,000 workers who were laid off worldwide during the worst of the recession, CEO James W. Owens said. The number of workers being recalled “could go higher,” he told Crain’s during an interview this week at a U.S.-Saudi Arabia business summit in Chicago. "We hope it will."
One-third of the rehires will be in the United States; the bulk of those 3,000 workers will be in Illinois, where Peoria-based Caterpillar has several large plants. Another 9,000 to 10,000 jobs will be created at Cat’s domestic suppliers.""

After the initial purchases, these capital goods become part of the nations Capital Stock, or stock of productive capital, for making goods far into the future.  Business spending is significant because it affects BOTH the demand AND suppy side of any economy.  It spurs immediate purchases of high dollar goods on the demand-side, and competition, innovation and, perhaps most important,  productivity on the supply-side, hence more jobs and opportunities now and into the  future...I can feel the ripple effect on the economies of Middle America as we speak!

Maximizing Utility....

MOST extreme Golf hole EVER?? I think so...

MOST extreme Golf hole EVER?? I think so...

Chart of Worlds Largest Oil Spills---Not something to be proud of...

Crude mistakes

The world's largest oil spills

ON APRIL 22nd Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig 130 miles (209 km) south-east of New Orleans sank into 1,500m (5,000 feet) of water, following an explosion two days earlier. Eleven of the 126 workers who were onboard remain unaccounted for. Around 1,000 barrels (42,000 US gallons) of crude have been leaking from the submersed rig each day since it sank last week. This spill however, pales in comparison to large disasters, both accidental and man-made. During the first Gulf war, the Iraqi army purposely destroyed tankers and oil terminals in Kuwait, releasing 500m barrels of crude, in order to hold-up the US Navy’s imminent approach in the Arabian Gulf. The environmental impacts caused by such spills varies greatly, with those close to the coast and pristine environments by far the most destructive. Hopefully the current oil slick will harden and sink to the ocean floor before it has a chance to make landfall in Louisiana over the next few days.