U.S. GDP is up nearly 140% since 1990 while emissions are barely up

GDP is adjusted for inflation in the graph below 

See this related post Chart of the day: In 2014, the US economy was more than twice as energy efficient (‘green’) as in 1970 when Earth Day started.

"the US economy was 28% larger last year than 14 years ago, even though slightly less total energy was required in 2014 than in 2000 (98.324 vs. 98.819 quadrillion BTUs) to produce $3.5 trillion more real output. That would be like adding an economy about the size of Germany’s to the US, but without requiring any additional energy to produce 28% more output!"

"since 1949 the size of the US economy has grown by a factor of 8 times, from $2.0 trillion in real GDP to $16.1 trillion in 2014. But over that time period, the annual amount of energy consumed in the US has increased by a factor of only 3 times"

"Compared to 1970 when the first Earth Day was celebrated and 14,400 BTUs of energy were required for every dollar of output, the energy efficiency of the US economy has more than doubled – we use less than half that amount of energy today (6,110 BTUs) for every dollar of output" 

Also see this speech by Governor Donald L. Kohn in 2006. 

"Since the 1970s, the energy intensity of production in the United States has fallen dramatically; indeed, on an inflation-adjusted basis, it takes roughly half as many Btu of energy to produce a dollar of GDP today than it did at the time of the 1973 oil crisis"

Also see this chart Energy intensity in the USA from Our World in Data.

"Energy intensity is measured as primary energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), in kilowatt-hours perdollar. GDP is adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs between countries."

In 1965 it took 3.47 kilowatt-hours to produce a dollar of GDP in the USA. In 2022 it was just 1.36 kilowatt-hours. That is about a 60% drop. Using less energy means fewer emissions. 

 

 

Posts about The Odyssey

Since the movie is out right now here are some related posts:

How Odysseus Started The Industrial Revolution (2025)

Factory work may have been a commitment device to get everyone to work hard. Odysseus tying himself to the mast was also a commitment device. 

Alarm clocks for Odysseus (2026) 

Would you pay someone to make you work hard? (2022)

Are payday-routine videos a commitment device? (2023) 

A three part series by Tyler Cowen:

Part 1: Modeling Homer’s World. 

Part 2: The Polities of The Odyssey.

Part 3: Polities and Economics.

What has happened to the percentage of people who work in farming over the centuries?

Tweet from David Labaree. He was a Stanford history professor.

 

 

 

Colleges And Universities Try To Be Like Hogwarts. What Would Carl Jung Say?

Originally posted in 2009.

There was an article in the New York Times recently about how schools tell prospective students how they are just like Hogwarts. It was Taking the Magic Out of College by By LAUREN EDELSON. Here are some things she mentioned about her visits to colleges:

"[at one school they play] a flightless version of J. K. Rowling’s Quidditch game — broomsticks and all."

"So I was surprised when many top colleges delivered the same pitch. It turns out, they’re all a little bit like Hogwarts — the school for witches and wizards in the “Harry Potter” books and movies. Or at least, that’s what the tour guides kept telling me."

"During a Harvard information session, the admissions officer compared the intramural sports competitions there to the Hogwarts House Cup. The tour guide told me that I wouldn’t be able to see the university’s huge freshman dining hall as it was closed for the day, but to just imagine Hogwarts’s Great Hall in its place."

"At Dartmouth, a tour guide ushered my group past a large, wood-paneled room filled with comfortable chairs and mentioned the Hogwarts feel it was known for. At another liberal arts college, I heard that students had voted to name four buildings on campus after the four houses in Hogwarts: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin."

"[In] Cornell’s fall 2009 quarterly magazine, [it says] that a college admissions counseling Web site had counted Cornell among the five American colleges that have the most in common with Hogwarts. Both institutions, you see, are conveniently located outside cities. The article ended: “Bring your wand and broomstick, just in case.”"

"I’m not the only one who has noticed this phenomenon. One friend told me about Boston College’s Hogwartsesque library, another of Colby’s “Harry Potter”-themed dinner party. And like me, my friends have no problem with college students across the country running around with broomsticks between their legs, trying to seize tennis balls stuffed into socks (each one dubbed a snitch) that dangle off the backs of track athletes dressed in yellow.""

In the same issue of the NY Times, there was a review of a book by the famous psychologist Carl Jung. The review was titled The Symbologist by KATHRYN HARRISON. The book by Jung is titled THE RED BOOK: Liber Novus. One of the passages from the book was was about Jung's belief in the "deep subliminal connections between individual fantasies and world events."

Mixing fantasy and reality. Sounds like what these colleges and universities are doing by comparing themselves to Hogwarts.

College-educated women have maintained stable marriage rates by partnering with high-earning non-college men, shrinking the pool of economically viable partners available to non-college women

See Gender Disparities in College Enrollment and Marriage Patterns by Clara Chambers, Benjamin Goldman & Joseph Winkelmann.

"Over the past half-century, the gender composition of American college campuses has shifted from predominantly male to predominantly female. Today, 1.6 million more women than men attend four-year colleges in the US. Over the same time period, the economic status of men without college degrees has deteriorated.

In Bachelors Without Bachelor’s: Gender Gaps in Education and Declining Marriage Rates (NBER Working Paper 35179), Clara Chambers, Benjamin Goldman, and Joseph Winkelmann investigate how these shifts in educational attainment and men’s economic outcomes have altered marriage patterns for college and non-college women. They combine cohort-level data from the Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey with linked census and tax records from the Opportunity Atlas for individuals born between 1930 and 1980.

College-educated women have largely insulated their marriage rates from the declining relative supply of college-educated men by increasingly partnering with high-earning non-college men. Despite the ratio of college men to college women falling from 1.8 to 0.8 between the 1930 and 1980 birth cohorts, marriage rates among college women declined only modestly, from 77.7 to 71.0 percent. Over the same period, marriage rates among non-college women fell from 78.7 to 52.4 percent.

The researchers estimate that if marriage patterns of college women with regard to college and non-college men had remained stable at their 1930 levels, given the evolution of the pools of college-educated men and women, marriage rates for college women would have declined by 16.7 percentage points. As a result of the shrinking supply of college men and the growing number of college women, more college women would have remained single.

The actual decline in the marriage rate for college women was only 6.7 percentage points. An estimated gap of 10.0 percentage points was offset by a greater-than-predicted rise in marriages between college women and non-college men. The share of Americans in a marriage between college-educated women and non-college men quadrupled from 2.3 percent in the 1930 cohort to 9.6 percent in the 1980 cohort. These marriages typically involve economically successful non-college men. The average annual wage and salary earnings at age 45, measured in 2024 dollars and adjusted for inflation, for non-college men who marry college women rose from $61,400 for the 1930 cohort to $68,400 for the 1980 cohort, while earnings for all other non-college men fell from $56,400 to $46,100 over the same period. As a result, the share of non-college men who both earn above the median and are not married to a college woman fell from 72.9 to 35.3 percent, reducing the pool of economically viable partners available to non-college women.

In areas where non-college men have stronger employment outcomes, the marriage rate gap between college and non-college women is narrower. A 1 standard deviation decline (7.6 percentage points) in the employment-to-population ratio for non-college men is associated with a 4.2 percentage point decline in marriage rates for non-college women, compared to only 2.4 percentage points for college women. In the lowest-employment areas, non-college women’s marriage rates average just 44.5 percent, versus 66.0 percent in the highest-employment areas.

The findings suggest that the educational and economic challenges facing non-college men have been a primary driver of widening class gaps in family formation. The researchers project that Americans born in the mid-1990s are on track to become the first cohort in which fewer than half of non-college women are married at age 45."

 

Related posts: 

Enhanced workforce participation and college attainment among women has transformed the marriage market with the trend toward preferences for similarity, particularly concerning income, education, and skills (2026) 

Inside the ‘Financial Infidelities’ That Tear Marriages Apart: It has never been easier to conceal unsavory spending from a spouse. Divorce—and significant financial damage—can follow (2026) 

Why Marriage Is Increasingly for the Affluent: The economic contract of marriage has shifted, and now young people are looking for financial stability before the wedding (2025) 

Jane Austen was wrong: women don’t marry up for money and status: A new study debunks the myth of the gold-digging wife, finding that women are no more likely to marry above their social class than men (2025)

When It Comes to Marriage and Money, Opposites Attract (2023)

As more people choose to marry someone with a similar income, inequality increases (2020) 

The preference for partners of the same education has significantly increased for white individuals (2017)

"Among students in the bottom socioeconomic quartile, 15 percent had earned a bachelor’s degree within eight years of their expected high school graduation, compared with 22 percent in the second quartile, 37 percent in the third quartile, and 60 percent in the top quartile."

"Data from the United States Census Bureau suggests there has been a rise in assortative mating....[I]f matching in 2005 between husbands and wives had been random, instead of the pattern observed in the data, then the Gini coefficient would have fallen from the observed 0.43 to 0.34, so that income inequality would be smaller""  

Rising brideprice—money or gifts provided to a woman’s family by the groom and his family as part of marriage arrangements—is a common if overlooked catalyst of violent conflict (2017)

What Do Men In China Need To Get A Bride? (2011)

There really is a marriage market in many countries (2011)

Do Women Really Value Income over Looks in a Mate? by Marina Adshade (2010) 

Do Opposites Attract? Not Usually, Except Maybe When It Comes To Money (2009)

When Women Earn More Than Men, Is Dating Affected? (2007) 

From $200 Loans to $30,000 Birkins, a Pawnshop Chain Serves the K-Shaped Economy

Higher household costs are driving demand for quick cash at Ezcorp’s stores, which also are seeing affluent customers on the hunt for secondhand luxury goods

By Jennifer Williams of The WSJ. 

I have done several posts on how people have been dealing with the inflation of the last few years as well as how they have been affected. Links to those posts are listed after some excerpts from the article.  Many of the things consumers are doing involve more time and effort doing things they would not normally do. This is one of the costs of inflation, what we have to do to avoid it or mitigate it.

Related posts:

These Americans Are Scrimping to Save Their Summer Vacations: More expensive food, tickets and fuel prompt some families to rethink their plans; ‘everybody has a breaking point’ (2026) 

New products, smaller packages and value meals are being rolled out to attract inflation-weary customers (2026) 

Where Americans Are Drawing the Line on Price Increases: Shoppers are buying less where prices are rising fastest, showing that inflation isn’t being driven by demand but by companies passing on costs (2026) 

The 2025 Inflation Numbers Are Finally In. Here’s the Good and Bad News: Gasoline prices are down, but rising grocery costs continue to weigh on consumers (2026) 

The Middle Class Is Buckling Under Almost Five Years of Persistent Inflation: Workers growing tired of economy in which everything seems to get more expensive (2025) 

The Lengths Americans Are Willing to Go to Make Every Penny Count: From buying half a cow to watering down soap, people are experimenting with frugality—and it is affecting sales at consumer companies (2025) 

Are you hurting the economy if you bring your lunch to work? (2025)

More people are bringing their lunch to work because restaurant meals have been going up in price. Again, more tasks that people are performing to avoid inflation 

Inflation Has Cooled, but Americans Are Still Seething Over Prices: Many people—though not all—saw wage increases that kept pace with the pandemic’s rapid price hikes, but the psychological toll remains (2024)

Child Care, Rent, Insurance: Where Inflation Hits Hardest Now (2024)

Why do workers dislike inflation? (2024) 

"workers must take costly actions (“conflict”) to have nominal wages catch up with inflation" They have to bargain with or fight their employers to get a wage increase to match inflation.

Inflation Usually Hits Harder for Poor Families. For a Couple of Years, It Didn’t. New research on how inflation varies between the poor, middle class and rich paints a different picture of poverty and inequality (2024)

The Haves and Have-Nots at the Center of America’s Inflation Fight: There’s a growing gap between Americans who are battered by high inflation and interest rates and those who are actually benefiting (2024)

An Increase in Uninsured Drivers Is Pushing Up Costs for Everyone Else (2024) 

Inflation has caused consumers to choose what they need to cut back on (insurance)

Costco and Sam’s Club Aisles Are Full of Gen Z Shoppers (2024)

Consumers are buying in bulk to save money by getting a lower per unit price

Inflation is mentally taxing (2024)

Inflation is mentally taxing. Dealing with a straitened budget exacts a psychological toll as well as a financial one

Store Brands Are Filling Up More of Your Shopping Cart (2024) 

People are on the look out for cheaper alternatives due to inflation

Consumers Fed Up With Food Costs Are Ditching Big Brands (2024) 

After years of price increases, food companies say more consumers pull back; fast-food chains and snack makers plan new deals and flavors

Are Americans Worrying Too Much About Inflation? Two opposing views (2024)

The Era of One-Stop Grocery Shopping Is Over (2024)

One thing that I always talked about with inflation was that one of its costs was all the things we had to do to avoid it. Consumers are making 8% more trips to different retailers as inflation continues to upend household budgets. They are going to more stores to find lower prices. But it costs time to do that and probably more money on gas.

When workers were paid twice a day and given half-hour shopping breaks (Germany, 1923) 

By mid-1923 workers were being paid as often as three times a day. Their wives would meet them, take the money and rush to the shops to exchange it for goods. However, by this time, more and more often, shops were empty. Storekeepers could not obtain goods or could not do business fast enough to protect their cash receipts. Farmers refused to bring produce into the city in return for worthless paper. The requirements to calculate and recalculate commercial transactions in the billions and trillions made it practically impossible to do business in paper Marks.

Yes, Americans Probably Are About 46 (or Maybe 65) Times Richer Than in 1776

By Jeremy Horpedahl.

"My post and chart from last week showed the phenomenal growth of average income in the US since the Founding. Using GDP per capita historical estimates and adjusting for inflation, this figure is about 46 times greater today than right around the time we declared independence.

It will probably not surprise you that some folks were skeptical. Could this really be true? Two major objections were raised to using GDP per capita. First, wouldn’t it be better to use a median income value rather than a mean (simple average)? Second, wouldn’t a measure of wages be better than GDP per capita?

I really would like to show you an annual series of median income data back to 1776, but unfortunately it just doesn’t exist. Good median income data are hard to find much before the 1950s, much less the 1770s. However, while median values are often better for showing levels, the growth rates of median wages and mean wages aren’t that different for periods when we have comparable data. Consider the following chart, which compares median wages (as calculated by EPI using CPS data) and mean wages (from BLS’s series for non-supervisory workers) since 1973. I have stated these in nominal terms, so don’t take this as real growth rates, but rather it is a raw comparison of two series (we could apply the same inflation adjustment to both, but that won’t change the picture, only the numbers).

 

Median wages increased by 667% and mean wages increased by 657%, almost identical. Again, these aren’t inflation adjusted, but that’s not the point of this exercise. The point is that whether you use mean or median wages, at least since 1973, the growth rates are the same. Was this true if we went back another 200 years? We can’t say for sure. But many people have this same skepticism about mean wages in recent decades. I think it is better to use median values when you have them, but we shouldn’t throw up our hands and claim we know nothing if all we have is mean wages.

Next, consider the following chart. It begins in 1790, but instead of using GDP per capita, as I did last week, it uses a measure of average wages from economic historian Lawrence Officer. This measure is for “production workers in manufacturing,” and it is a total compensation measure, meaning that it will include the value of fringe benefits as well — though these aren’t noticeable in the data until the 1930s. This is still an average value, but because it is for manufacturing laborers, it won’t be distorted by the wages of managers and owners in that industry, and it won’t be affected by the growth of new industries that might require more years of education (indeed, manufacturing wages are lowering than overall average wages today, so this is taking the hard case). I have also included a second line, which only includes manufacturing wages (not benefits) that I have blended with Officer’s compensation series starting in the 1930s, in case you think including benefits is somehow “cheating.” (Note the log scale again, as in last week’s chart.)

 

The trends here are very much in the ballpark from the GDP per capita chart I created last week. Using total compensation, wages are 65 times higher than in 1790. Using only wages, they are 49 times higher. Notice that these are both better than the 46 times multiplier using GDP per capita. How is that possible, since I am using the same price deflator in both cases? First, average hours of work have fallen significantly since the 18th century, so incomes haven’t risen quite as much as wages. Second, there was a bit of a decline in GDP per capita during the Revolutionary War, and if we use 1790 as the baseline for GDP per capita, the multiplier is 63. But again, these numbers are all in the ballpark: whether the true figure for a typical American is 46x, 49x, 63x, or 65x, this is a tremendous amount of economic growth.

If you want to look at that chart pessimistically, you will see that there is some reduction in growth rates in the past few decades. That’s true whether we use wages or compensation. This is a well known issue, and has been discussed endlessly in academic papers and on social media. I don’t want to glaze over it here, but I mostly will: the long-run trend of growth in the US is amazing. That’s true whether you use GDP per capita, or wages or compensation for production workers.

So once again, Happy 250th Birthday to the USA and all of you living in the wake of that amazing 250 years of economic growth!"

Related posts:

Average U.S. real income is 46 times higher than it was in 1774 (2026) 

The World Isn’t Actually Going to Hell in a Handbasket: Human beings have been complaining about a moral decline since, well, forever (2024) 

There is still reason to hope despite the fact that more than three-quarters of Americans say the United States is headed in the wrong direction (2024)

We are privileged to live in an age of medical miracles that increase human welfare (as the share of the world’s people living in extreme poverty has fallen) (2023) 

Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2020) 

The World Is Getting Quietly, Relentlessly Better (2019)

This Has Been the Best Year Ever (2019)

Why 2017 Was the Best Year in Human History (2018)

The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it (2018)

How Much Has Life Expectancy Improved?  (2018)

Some Good Economic News (2013)

Some farmers in rural Pennsylvania are getting rich selling land for data-centers but it is also causing some social conflict

See The Americans Striking It Rich in the Data-Center Buildout: One family sold its struggling farmland for $22 million, joining a new class of multimillionaires who are cashing in on the AI data-center boom by Will Parker of The WSJ. 

I had a post last month titled Europe’s Arms Race Is Creating Boomtowns. Why Are Locals So Unhappy? (and an example of why labor supply curves slope upward): New investment in French and British towns brings jobs but sparks division and resentment.

One thing I said there was "Sometimes when there is a new product or government policy that leads to higher incomes for some locals but not all it stirs up conflicts. This seems like another example of that."

In this case some people in Salem Township are upset because of possible environmental effects and also the loss of some peace and quiet.

It also reminded me of a Wall Street Journal article from 1990. It was titled "RANGE WAR-SMALL MINNESOTA TOWN Is DIVIDED BY RANCOR OVER SUGAR POLICIES." It was by Bruce Ingersoll.

The entire article was read into The Congressional Record back then. 

If you search for MAYNARD at this link you will come to the article. That is the town that the story is about.

There was an increase in prices for sugar beets due to the government reducing imports. Some farmers started making alot more money than their neighbors. It allowed them to outbid others for land. This caused resentment. Long time friends avoided each other or stopped talking to each other even if they saw each other in town.

The AI Backlash Has Tech Executives Fearing for Their Lives (a case of modern day Luddites?)

Violent threats against AI companies are rising and spilling over into real-world security incidents

By Lindsay Ellis, Zusha Elinson and Tina Li of The WSJ. 

It is not just threats but their have been acts of vandalism.

I used a book called The Economics Of Macro Issues by Daniel Benjamin and Roger LeRoy Miller. It mentioned Luddites, people who destroyed industrial equipment in England in the early 1800s. They were weavers who lost their jobs to new machinery. 

Related posts:

Driverless Trucks Are Here—and They’re Delivering Bags of Doritos (plus backlash aganist robotaxis): PepsiCo has 41 trucks on the road in Arizona, Texas and Arkansas, bringing the technology into the mainstream (2026) 

Romance novelist gets death threats on social media because she uses AI to help her write stories (2026)

The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam Booed commencement speakers, blocked data centers, plummeting poll numbers: Fast-growing industry has a faster-growing crisis (2026) 

Two recent articles on robots and human workers (2024) (this mentions Luddites)

The surprising link between science fiction and economic history

By Sebastian Buckup. He is Head of Programming, Global Programming Group, Member of the Executive Committee, World Economic Forum. Today is National ScienceFiction Day. Excerpt: 

"Exactly 200 years ago, in 1816, a teen-aged girl called Mary Shelley began writing the story of Frankenstein in a villa in Cologny, a short walk from where the World Economic Forum now has its offices. Her ghoulish but subtle tale featured a scientist bringing a sentient, suffering creature to life from parts found in the “dissecting room and the slaughter-house".

“Frankenstein” was written at the end of the First Industrial Revolution, capturing the fears and squeamishness of a society going through massive transformations whilst making its first forays into surgery. The book took inspiration from earlier critics of the dawn of industrialisation, among them John Milton and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Today, Shelley’s Frankenstein is seen as the start of a genre, the first work of science fiction. By imaginatively combining the rigour of science with the freedom of fiction, the genre plays a big role in expressing the hopes and fears we project into our creations.

The best sci-fi stories mix two ingredients. The first is great science which sometimes leads to surprising accuracy: Jules Verne imagined a propeller-driven aircraft in the early 19th century, when balloons were the best that aviation had to offer. In the 1960s, Arthur C. Clarke envisioned the iPad, and Ray Bradbury the Mars landing. It may just be a matter of time until “Samantha”, the AI voice in Spike Jonze’s film Her, will be real, or until we bump into a version of “Ava”, the humanoid robot from Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina”.
 

The second ingredient is a keen understanding of contemporary hopes and fears. This is what makes these books and films great tools for dissecting the sentiments of an era. The two most successful sci-fi stories ever, George Lucas’ Star Wars and Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, are amongst the best examples of how pop culture combined perceptions of technological progress with contemporary hopes and fears."

Other history related posts:

Adam Smith and the Role of the Towns in Feudal Europe (2026) 

Extractive Taxation and the French Revolution: Between 1750 and 1789, areas in France with heavier tax burdens experienced significantly more riots (2026)

Economics influenced the spread of viral rumors during the French Revolution (2025)

When Beer is Safer than Water: Beer Availability and Mortality from Waterborne Illnesses in 18th Century England (2022) 

MONKS, GENTS AND INDUSTRIALISTS: THE LONG-RUN IMPACT OF THE DISSOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH MONASTERIES (2022) 

Did Tea Drinking Cut Mortality Rates in England? (2022) 

Primitive communism: Marx’s idea that societies were naturally egalitarian and communal before farming is widely influential and quite wrong (plus Ruth Benedict on property rights) (2022)

In 1923, Germany printed money to pay workers who were told to stay at home (2022)

When workers were paid twice a day and given half-hour shopping breaks (Germany, 1923) (2020)

Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2020) 

Some History of Insurance (2019)

The surprising link between science fiction and economic history (2019)

What happened in some earlier U.S. trade Wars? (2019)

Pre-market societies could sometimes have alot of violence (2018)  

The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it  (2018)

The surprising link between science fiction and economic history (2016)

Both numeracy and literacy were invented in the service of finance and commerce (2016)  

Were The Pilgrims Capitalists Or Socialists? (2014)

Did the industrial revolution cause children to take on adult roles later and later? (2012)

Was 1800 (approximately) A Pivotal Year In Human History? Robert Fogel, Francis Fukuyama, And Deirdre McCloskey All Seem To Think So (2011)