Free Republic

Degrowth broadly means shrinking rather than growing economies, so we use less of the world’s energy and resources and put wellbeing ahead of profit. The solution is essentially to move away from the assumption that growth is good. One of the things degrowthers would like to see is the end of gross domestic product (GDP) being used as a measure of economic progress, notes The Conversation. GDP measures an economy’s entire output of goods and services. One of the things degrowthers would like to see is the end of gross domestic product (GDP) being used as a measure of economic...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Demand for big-ticket manufactured goods plunged in August by the largest amount in seven months, with widespread weakness signaling a slowdown in the nation's industrial sector. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that orders for durable goods, everything from commercial jetliners to home appliances, fell by 4.9 percent in August, the biggest decline since a 6.1 percent fall in January. It was far larger than the 3.5 percent drop that economists had been expecting and resulted from across-the-board decreases in a number of categories. The concern is that the steep downturn in housing and turbulence in financial markets...

California has more than 36 million residents and is expected by some projections to have 60 million by 2050. People keep moving here, and yet the state government is doing everything it can to make it harder to build the homes necessary to house everyone. It's already incredibly costly and difficult to get government approvals to build housing developments, as cities micromanage pretty much everything a builder does. People will need to live somewhere. If other counties embrace Marin's overall approach toward development, the newcomers will have nowhere to live – even as Marin officials bask in their moral superiority....

Sometimes, I think that I am repeating myself over and over again. It seems that my liberal friends in the Legislature keep doing the same things over and over again, and never realize that it is what they are doing that is hurting the rest of us. The latest thing is affordable housing. About a month ago, playing off of the theme of her husband’s presidential campaign, Senator Hillary Clinton said, “It’s the American dream, stupid,” obviously implying that Democrats should focus on making sure people can buy a home—the “American dream”. This has led to a lot of the...

Light Pollution At the beginning of the 21st century, humanity is losing a valuable and beautiful part of its heritage. For the first time in history, poorly designed and badly aimed lighting is denying vast numbers of humanity a view of the night sky. Urban sky glow now pollutes nearly all of Britain's night skies. As amateur astronomers we have a responsibility to guard our night time environment against light pollution. What is light pollution?  Light pollution is the popular name for sky glow - a brightening of the night sky caused by the scattering of artificial light by aerosol...

Residents Rightfully Ask - Who should pay to clean my pool? Who should pay to get the coil-damaging dust out of my A/C unit at my home? Who should pay my water bill to clean up all this dust in my Yard? We have heard of no good faith offer to compensate homeowners for the cost of cleaning up the dust by the developers that caused it. Will attorney fees be added to the developers clean up costs? Affected homeowners group is looking at filing class-action suit for dust damages. Irresponsible builders and inaction by city leaders who have been...

The PGA in a letter to the city council has announced that they do not want to be involved in what has become such a divisive issue. They are backing out after years of negotiations. Due to a small mainority of nogrowth folks in SA who managed to place the whole issue up to a vote of the pupulace through an initiative process ... the city will now not have three new golf courses and a beautiful planned development surrounding the courses. The development was on privately owned county land. Outside the city of San Antonio. The PGA had agreed...