Most read Realitybase posts in April

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 global competitiveness of American business, that violates fundamental insurance risk principles, and that has inherent conflicts of interest preventing quality national health care delivery and cost efficiency; and proposing a solution.

The Citigroup Plutonomy Memos With key quotations from documents that are being disappeared. This post has been the #1 response to a Google search for "plutonomy memo."

H-1b, the "Outsourcing Visa" How H-1b and L-1 visas are being used and abused by US employers to outsource millions of high-tech jobs and to bring in low-wage indentured servants to fill jobs vacated by firing high-wage citizen incumbents.

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

Prolonged unemployment has profound life-changing economic and social consequences. Selected findings from a meta-study about how prolonged periods of unemployment for 20-somethings change their lives permanently for the worse. Facts, figures, and anecdotes.

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

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 CAFE standards, and has fluctuated only slightly with retail price changes.

The US trade deficit is tribute paid to foreigners. And it's big. Nobel laureates Paul Samuelson, Joseph Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman and other prominent economists including Dani Rodrik, Alan Blinder, Martin Wolf, Larry Summers, Dean Baker, and even Alan Greenspan have said that the US middle class is net worse off as a result of persistent trade deficits averaging 3% of GDP.

Why we acquire beliefs and refuse to change them Describing and discussing six reasons with evolutionary advantages why we may cling to our beliefs even after they have become undeniably counterfactual and unreasonable. The original post is supplemented by numerous follow-ups containing examples and views of others including John Maynard Keynes, Sam Harris, David Brooks, John Quiggin, Ashwin Parameswaran, Lawrence M. Krauss, Thomas Kuhn, John F. Kennedy, and David Warsh. This is the first time this has made the monthly hit parade, but it is one of my favorite posts.

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