Thomas Malthus, in his ‘Essay on Population’ in 1798, argued that food production would not be able to keep pace with our capacity to produce. Contrary to this prediction there seems to be no evidence that our ability to produce food has been a lasting break on population growth. There are, however, several major areas of concern regarding environmental degradation associated with production ha...

The past two hundred years have seen a remarkable transformation in the standard of living of a substantial fraction of the world’s population. Since about 1800, real wages of ordinary workers in Western Europe and North America have risen steadily by roughly one to two percent per year. This has lead to a cumulative increase in real wages of a staggering 1500%. In sharp contrast, real wages of...