Cheap corn calories.
Although I have not finished the Pollan book yet, I am sure that corn-based calories are too inexpensive for our own good. If we are judged as a society by how inexpensive food can be, well then we have arrived. If conversely, we are judged by the outcomes of our cheep calories; we have been exposed as failures. We must do a better job of eating without gaining fat, our children deserve better from their role models.

What do Greshams law, Akerlof's lemons and Easterly's heterogeneous people have in common?
The expectations (demand) of consumers of currency, Yugos, and human capital, respectively effect not only the short term specific markets; but more importantly the long term equilibrium for the goods in question. Eventually, the expectations will determine the future viability of the good.

The Cost of being a successful Christian are often misunderstood. In economics all costs are considered to be opportunity costs. An opportunity cost is best defined as the next best thing. For example the next best thing you might do rather than read this blog, is the true cost of reading this blog. Thus the opportunity cost of Christianity is not Islam or Hinduism, because that is not the next best thing the majority of Christians might choose. The opportunity cost of Christianity is more likely to be: the judging of others, or bass fishing, or sexual promiscuity, gossip, greed , or any number of things potentially given up to become a successful Godly person.

Jesus knew that scarcity helps define and determain our priorities.
Jesus seemed to prefer the poor over the rich, perhaps it is because the poor needed him more. After all, the rich of his time had an even greater share of the total wealth than we see here (in the USA) today. But, I have decided that it is the fact that the poor understand scarcity better than the wealthy. The poor understand opportunity cost (the next best thing given up to get something), and this understanding helps them determain what is important to them. Jesus must have felt that for this reason, the poor would be either more responsive or at least decide quicker, questions about their own spirituality.

Velocity can be as important as money supply in determining economic activity and the aggregate multiplier. If citizens feel constrained to hold their monies it matters less what the state of the money supply is. I also ponder the role of inflation in adding employment to the economy. I don't mean to belittle Okuns law, but the reason it works is the asymmetrical information. The asymmetry involved in finding extra money in your, or your business's bank account. If you knew it was inflation, rather than your business acumen, you wouldn't spend or hire. I guess that is why Okun can't be exploited.

Michael Pollan called the #2 corn created by the nations farmers a biomass. It seems that farm policy created by Earl Butz (secretary of agriculture under Nixon), encourages a glut in the more generic version of corn often used by the industrial food complex. This glut becomes the fodder for the brightest food chemists industry has to offer. The result....foods our Grandma would not recognize. Pollan says if Grandma wouldn't recognize it, we shouldn't eat it.

From the economist point of view. The government takes the view that externalities, (things that have either positive or negative effect that goes beyond the price paid for them), must be either taxed or subsidized. If corn is subsidized (ostensibly because it is somehow undervalued), more corn will be produced than consumers really want. As David Friedman's delightful Intermediate Micro-Economic Text reminds us, through a potato metaphor (ironically enough), consumer welfare is ultimately worse off because of the subsidy altered equilibrium. Pollan would tell us that the #2 corn glut has an opportunity cost of less processed foods.

Net result......Consumers Nutrition suffers.

Tom

Today I am fascinated with a book I am currently reading and its implications on America's nutritional history. I am reading Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma", which speaks of food chains, the history of corn and our disenfranchisement from a sense of authority concerning the feeding our own bodies. This is not a conspiracy, but a result of the post war industrial infrastructure and a search for agricultural efficiency.

I'll let you know as I finish the book.

Tom