Most Read Realitybase Posts in April

The Citigroup Plutonomy Memos With key quotations from documents that are being disappeared.

The Dysfunction and Corruption of Our Healthcare System, Its Damage to the National Economy and other Basic Healthcare Matters (Guest Post) Describing a system that is destroying the American business economy and our ability to compete globally, which violates fundamental insurance risk principles, and which has inherent conflicts of interest that prevent quality national health care delivery and cost efficiency, and proposing a solution.

The American Dream died in February 1973 With graphs from multiple sources showing stagnation of inflation-adjusted middle class incomes since the 1970s after strong and steady post-WWII growth

The history of US per-capita petroleum consumption will surprise you.  A graph and other data show US per-capita consumption of petroleum is down substantially from the 1970s, has been very stable since 1983 because of CAFÉ standards, and has fluctuated only slightly with retail price changes.

Two hypotheses why US CEO pay is so high Charts show that in the US CEO pay is about double that in other advanced countries, implying either that there is a shortage of talent in the US, or that the US CEO pay market is broken.

State of the Union, Part 2—The Great Recession is far worse than any other post-war recession, and there are big underlying long-term problems. Quotations from the President's vivid, dystopian description or our economic problems in his January 2010 address, supplemented with charts and data showing he did not overstate our problems.

US job creation has been declining since April 2000 and is now in freefall. Features a dramatic graph.

One chart refutes three myths about US foreign trade. About Smoot-Hawley, the post-WWII export "boom," and "self-balancing" trade.

What's the market alternative to this big government program? On a per-vehicle-mile-traveled basis, conventional command-and-control regulations have reduced deaths by 85%, tailpipe pollutants by 89%, and fuel consumption by 40%.

Comparative Advantage—The Unicorn of Free Trade A collection of sources and analyses demonstrating that the assumptions of classic Ricardian theory rarely if ever align with real-world conditions.