Most read Realitybase posts in May 2014

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.

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.

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

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.

U.S. aircraft carrier and 15 other Navy ships sunk in the Strait of Hormuz in 5-10 minutes Reporting on the results of US war games when attacked by large numbers of speed boats and missiles such as Iran has in the hands of Revolutionary Guards reputed to be "cowboys," and suggesting still other ways we might get into an all-out war with Iran by accident.

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

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."

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.

John Maynard Keynes argued in 1933 that globalization had been oversold. A doctrinaire free trader in 1923, in April 1933 Keynes gave a formal lecture, National Self-Sufficiency, to acknowledge that, while economic internationalization has important benefits, it also has important costs, and he makes a case for relatively more self-sufficiency. "National self-sufficiency, in short, though it costs something, may be becoming a luxury which we can afford, if we happen to want it." He discusses the reasons why we may want it, including the suggestion that, contrary to the assumption just before the start of WWI, when economic globalization was at its highest point ever, peace may be easier to keep if national economies are not highly integrated.  Includes a long quotation from the lecture.

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.