Re: silver certificates

On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 13:43:09 -0600, Petepenguin@xxxxxxxxx (P T) wrote:

oly wrote

...Three or four percent of the world's
people (i.e., the U.S.A.) have consumed
anywhere from 30% to 50% of the
world's resources since the end of
the second world war... America gets
nice goods for nearly 65 years now,
much at no real cost to us,
the rest of the world gets
more and more toilet paper...

I don't know much about Bretton Woods or the IMF, but I know a jab at
the USA when I see one. You attribute no source for your numbers, but
I'm willing to grant that they may be plausible. However, is this really
a "USA" issue? I suspect you could throw a few other countries into the
mix, and make the argument just as well, without the anti-American bias.

Also, it's another one of those "interesting, but ultimately
meaningless" statistics because there is no context.

I just saw a UCSB study that says that the US uses 22% (not 30 to
50%) of the worlds resources. But, if you look at the IMF data on
GDP, the US takes that 22% resource use, and turns it into over 27% of
the gross world product. IOW, we're better than average when it comes
to taking a pound or a gallon of something, and turning it into
something else.

You could say:

A small percent of the world's people (i.e., the USA, Canada, Australia,
Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Norway,
Denmark, Switzerland, and Japan) have consumer the vast majority of the
world's resources since the end of the Second World War"

Maybe it's the eternal problem of the Haves and Have-nots.

And sadly, the only way some see to make things "better" is to only
let the "haves" have as much as the "have-nots". After all, wouldn't
the whole world be better off if the US had the same leve of health
care as, say, Mali?

take care,
Scott
"20% of all microfleems are subradiant"
.

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