American life-expectancy dropping.

Well, more like the poorest -- also Southern -- Americans. And female ones.

Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and higher food prices.

Edit: article and spin from james_nicoll. Counterspin.

Summary: food prices are rising on conventional grains and things made from them, which is almost everything, especially everything junky. Organic and local food prices aren't rising so much, or even falling for produce, so the named people are quoted as looking forward to people having incentives to eat in a healthier and less environmentally damaging way, though a more expensive way.

Houses being gutted for their copper pipes.

Hey, Cleveland gets mentioned.

Columbus Dispatch.

Um, wow?

Edit: 1 in 6 in West Virginia.

Richest country in the world, what?

US bans online gambling. Antigua successfully got damages from the WTO. US isn't paying, and Antigua can't afford to raise tariffs on US goods. Antigua suggests waiving intellectual property protection of US IP in Antigua to make up the fine. US: "waaah!" US invokes a "this isn't subject to WTO rules" option, which sounds like Britain's opt-out abilities in the EU the name of which I forget, and which could make a mockery of the WTO if heavily used.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/16/bloomberg/bxgamble.php

"We would've written a check to Antigua, paid them to go away," said John Magnus, a trade lawyer at Miller & Chevalier in Washington. "Instead, they pressed the point."

Magnus said "the strategy they've pursued is not designed to advance the interests of Antigua. It's pique and anger from some individual businessmen."

Translation: "Why aren't they taking our bribe? Why are they insisting on the rules?"

A quick sloppy post because it's late. I've been involved in libertarian/liberal/soc dem debates again recently, which prompts the matter of comparative economics, and how well various countries do. If you look at the CIA World Factbook, there's a big gap in GDP/capita (Purchasing Power Parity adjusted): US at $44,000, Norway even higher, but almost everyone else I'd be comparing us to in the $30-35,000 range. Big gap! Why?

data links:
GDP/capita
PPP

Possibilities:
US workers are that much more productive as they work.
US workers work that many more hours.
American empire: corporate exploitation of other countries, and Hollywood's cultural imperialism, brings in a lot of extra GDP money, possibly manifesting as extra millionaires and billionaires.
Bias: PPP calculations heavily weight something the US is particularly good at, like cheap oil or real estate.
Egalitarian backlash: higher base wages in other countries means that anything labor dependent is more expensive there. The middle American has access to cheap Americans and immigrants that the middle Swede doesn't. Upside, no cheap Swedes, downside more expensive products. Upside for Americans: servants. Downside: someone has to be the servant.

There's probably data to be found on all of this, but it's late. I think that European vacation time isn't *that* much greater or hours worked that much less, but I could be wrong.

One thing I could test easily: CIA gives raw GDP numbers and population, though not raw GDP/capita, but I can divide. Result: Sweden and Denmark look a lot more comparable to the US, while Norway soars to $57,000. France doesn't change that much. Canada gets worse.

The point of that number is how much power the consumer has on the world market. Locally, Swedes are at a disadvantage, perhaps because other Swedes are more expensive, or because Sweden is so far north. When it comes to imports, they're a lot more equal to us -- which speaks to socdem's competitiveness vs. American capitalism.

Comments or data tips from other readers (james pompe dsgood) welcome!

Over on rasfw, David Tate started the thread "Time Travelers strictly barter", on what would be good for a time traveller to carry with them to get by in their destination. He was particularly interested in things besides the old standbys, silver and gold, things such as spices, synthetic gems, pins, lodestones. But the topic hit upon a couple of past interests of mine: prices in medieval Europe (for the Ars Magica game), and why and how there's such a huge wage differential between the First and Third Worlds.