Saturday, December 02, 2006

Real Wages abd Productivity

First, we need to think about what we mean by "wages." A worker's nominal wages are the dollar value of her take-home pay, not including benefits. For example, if a worker earns $20 per hour before taxes, that is her nominal hourly wage. However, a worker's real wages are the wages adjusted for inflation. However, the article doesn't say that real wages have decreased--indeed, with the exception of 2005, real wages have generally increased over the last few years. The article's main point is that as a percentage of GDP, real wages have been steadily declining. In other words, the growth rate of GDP has been steadily greater than the growth rate of wages and salaries.

Who needs Kyoto when we have the Endangered Species Act?

Consider the following taken from the :http://www.fws.gov/endangered/esa.html
Whenever any species is listed as a threatened species...the Secretary shall issue such regulations as he deems necessary and advisable to provide for the conservation of such species.
Now keep that in mind while you http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11233316/ (from AP):
In a move hailed by environmentalists, the Bush administration announced it will review whether polar bears should be considered a threatened species given indicators that their icy habitats are melting away due to global warming.
Could the ESA really be used as backdoor legislation for global warming? Just wondering.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Oceanic Biodiversity

There has been studies by enviornmentalists that show that we must reduce the number of fish being overfished or other practices or we will destroy our oceanic biodiversity. The biodiversity is quickly being depleted and they will die off if we continue to destory at the current rate and dont re-enforce a new policy. Scientists say that with out policymakers making a change we will see a world marine biodiversity that will be depleted by the mid 21st century. Many fisheries have been completly destroyed and the amount of marine life is not an unlimited supply, which in fact is harder to repair then it is to be destoyed. In the recent news the policies have made it clear that we are staring to preserve the diversity. With the fisheries management we can say that science is responsible for keeping the ecosystem so it may sustain a long term economic health in fish communities to get the biodiversity around. More countries and fisheries need to follow the sustainalbel models that have been practiced by Alaska's fisheries. We need Congress to step in and improve the policies to make more fisheries efficent like those of them in Alaska. What needs to be done is a proposal needs to be sent to the president that would provide a strict enforceable limits on the amount that can be taken out of a given area. The biodiversity of marine life will be depeted faster than we can fix it so we have to apply policies to keep these species around.