The cost of a 1600 lumen LED lightbulb has recently dropped by 25 percent. The new bulb also offers a great innovation. The problem with LED bulbs is that they come in five different shades. Feit Electric’s new light solves this problem by putting a switch on each bulb that lets you pick your preferred shade level. The energy to use this new lightbulb costs 17 percent more, or around 31 cents a year ($2.11 versus $1.80 based on 3 hours per day at 11 cents per kWh.) The new bulb will give you an hour of great light for less than 0.2 cents. Blue-collar workers are currently earning around $35 an hour in compensation (wages and benefits). One hour Read More ›
35 consumer goods take 54.4% to 94.9% less time to earn the money to buy. Most of us begin our work life as unskilled workers. But we learn new skills every day and this allows us to upgrade to higher-paying jobs. In a word, we enjoy career mobility. This is why it is important to follow a person’s path through their economic life. We create categories to divide populations into groups. Categories can provide useful demographic snapshots. Categories don’t change but people move through categories throughout their lives. This is why in many cases it makes more sense to look at individuals instead of categories. We talk about this issue here. We looked at the time prices of 35 finished goods Read More ›
In “Life After Capitalism,” George Gilder, citing Marian L. Tupy and Gale L. Pooley in the Cato Institute’s volume “Superabundance,” writes that “between 1980 and 2022, workers have been able to buy some 300 percent more goods and services with their hours and minutes.” The secret sauce is applied knowledge. Read More ›
Without the innovation of TV, there would be no internet or mobile phones. It is a foundation technology for the age of knowledge discovery. Read More ›
If you’re really in favor of more abundant resources, then you really have to be in favor of people having the freedom to innovate, discover, share, and consume knowledge. Read More ›
While it is easy to be pessimistic if you compare today to utopia, a much better perspective is to look at yesterday and see how far we’ve come in our journey to lift everyone from poverty. We’re experiencing growth in material abundance, time abundance, and choice abundance. Welcome to Superabundance! Read More ›
Ronald Reagan said “There are no limits to growth and human progress when men and women are free to follow their dreams.” In Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet the Cato Institute’s Marian Tupy and Brigham Young professor Gale Pooley make a cogent, empirically-grounded case for Reagan’s full-throated optimism. Read More ›
Our economic lives improve if we are free to continuously add knowledge to our planet’s atoms. Knowledge makes atoms more valuable and more abundant at the same time. To better understand our world, we need to focus on the growth of knowledge instead of the aging of our bodies. We face limits to our mortality, but not limits to the growth in value-creating knowledge. Read More ›
Escaping grinding deprivation has been the aspiration of humanity since the dawn of time. Now that many of the planet’s peoples are blessed with sufficient means of survival — and some with plenty — a trendy narrative threatens to turn the dream into a nightmare. Read More ›
Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Gale Pooley's new book "Superabundance" is officially released today. It tells the story of population growth, innovation, and human flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet. Read More ›
