{"id":59124,"date":"2021-08-25T05:59:08","date_gmt":"2021-08-25T10:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59124"},"modified":"2021-08-25T05:59:08","modified_gmt":"2021-08-25T10:59:08","slug":"a-rising-tide-sinks-all-boats-eventually","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59124","title":{"rendered":"A rising tide sinks all boats\u2026 eventually"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A rising tide sinks all boats\u2026 eventually<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Have you heard that\u00a0ice cream causes murder<\/a>\u00a0or that global warming has led to an increase in piracy? Apparently in Maine, consuming more\u00a0margarine leads to more divorces<\/a>, while increased US spending on science, space and technology results in increases in suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation.\u00a0 Actually, these are examples of spurious or false correlations \u2013 entirely unrelated things whose data\u00a0appear<\/em>\u00a0to suggest a causal relationship.\u00a0 And in these examples, the outcome is little more damaging than a few humorous media articles and a couple of books.<\/p>\n

False correlations, however, run deep.\u00a0 And some can have a pernicious impact on large numbers of us.\u00a0 Consider for example, the well-worn neoliberal saying that \u201ca rising tide raises all boats.\u201d\u00a0 It is based on two mistaken premises.\u00a0 First, that employment is\u00a0always<\/em>\u00a0a route from poverty to prosperity; and second, that an increase in overall employment\u00a0must<\/em>\u00a0benefit everyone.\u00a0 And it is for these reasons that continued economic growth is the altar upon which all else must be sacrificed.<\/p>\n

The evidence for the benefits of economic growth\u00a0for all<\/em>\u00a0is far more nuanced.\u00a0 In pre-industrial economies where most people worked the land, there is little evidence that much growth occurred beyond that allowed by the ups and downs of the annual harvest.\u00a0 Indeed, it took the economies of the British Isles until the eighteenth century to re-reach the technological level of the Roman Empire; so what economic growth their had been amounted to a catching up following a major economic collapse.\u00a0 And even during that period of lethargic growth, various plagues and famines \u2013 including the catastrophic Black Death in the fourteenth century \u2013 rapidly threw economies into reverse.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rising tide sinks all boats\u2026 eventually Have you heard that\u00a0ice cream causes murder\u00a0or that global warming has led to an increase in piracy? Apparently in Maine, consuming more\u00a0margarine leads to more divorces, while increased US spending on science, space and technology results in increases in suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation.\u00a0 Actually, these are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31644,31147,4894,31660,31360],"class_list":["post-59124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-causation","tag-consciousness-of-sheep","tag-correlation","tag-spurious-correlation","tag-tim-watkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59125,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59124\/revisions\/59125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}