Slate Ad Supplement

A Guide to the Environment and Public Works 

Is Productivity Oversold?

By Timothy Noah

Posted Thursday, Jan. 4, 2001, at 12:26 p.m. PT

Economic journalists used to tout computer-driven productivity gains as revolutionary. Now they’re pooh-poohing them. Does this mean the recession has begun? Three years ago, David Wessel and Bob Davis of the Wall Street Journal published a persuasive book called Prosperity: The Coming Twenty-Year Boom and What It Means To You. Its thesis was that the United States had entered an era of technology-driven economic growth that was comparable to the dawn of electrical power at the turn of the century. Now John Cassidy of The New Yorker and Phillip Longman of U.S. News and World Report have written persuasive essays claiming that the current productivity boom is oversold.

Visit PublicWorks.com, a resource for professionals seeking information on manufacturing, technology, equipment, supplies, municipal construction, and more. A VerticalNet community.

Diary of Fred Jacob, Manager of a Mobile Public Health Laboratory

By Fred Jacob

Posted: Wednesday, Dec. 30, 1998, at 11:00 a.m. PT

Fred Jacob oversees water testing and mobile public health laboratories for TASCA (Laboratories for Public Health) in Nicaragua. During the time he wrote his diary for Slate, Jacob was coordinating the distribution of medical aid in areas devastated by Hurricane Mitch.

Find information on technology, equipment, supplies, emergency response, protective equipment, catastrophe, and more at Safety Online, a resource for professionals in the safety industry. A VerticalNet community.

Dialogue: The Environment and Economics

By Carl Pope and Steven Landsburg

Posted: Wednesday, March 26, 1997, at 4:30 p.m. PT

Carl Pope is executive director of the Sierra Club. Steven E. Landsburg is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester and author of ” Tax the Knickers Off Your Grandchildren” in Slate. The following excerpt was taken from their exchange:

It is pitiful that your article, “Tax the Knickers Off Your Grandchildren” can pass for economics. Your key assumption is that environmentalists and the Sierra Club get in the way of economic growth. Your one example of this process is that Oregon lumberjacks are unemployed because the Sierra Club has obstructed their right to “confiscate your rich grandchildren’s view of the giant redwoods.”

Pollution Online is a resource for professionals in the pollution control industry looking seeking product information, news & analysis, and job opportunities. A VerticalNet community.

Wash This Way

By Eliza Truitt

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 16, 1999, at 4:30 p.m. PT

I do not have a fleet of washing machines in which to conduct my tests. I don’t have a radiation spectrometer for measuring the whiteness of whites the way Consumer Reports does. But I do have tools formidable in their own right at my service …

For information on water treatment, sludge dewatering, pipe rehabilitation, flowmeters, wastewater management, and water clarification, visit Water Online. A VerticalNet community.

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