• But in here it's so delightful - thoughts on Obama and the weather
• Protectionism: Everybody stimulate yourself!
• I like the pictures
• Mandela, King, Gandhi... Blagojevich
• Shovels are so 1933
• The cutting edge is nipping at its own tail
• Funny Because It's True (yet again)
• Obligatory Gaza
• Being Reasonable--reaction from the Muslim family recently thrown off a flight by AirTrain
• Won't you be my neighbor?
• Snowzilla
• ZOMG! Radioactive coal sludge will kill us all! (updated)
• Quick points on the auto industry bailout
• Slow and Steady
• Foreign policy and international public opinion

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« Connections | Main | Economic Growth »

A Challenge to Captain Capitalism

Captain Capitalism is a man who loves three things in life: Soap, Shampoo, and Graphs. Since I'm not quite the graphophile as he, I would like to extend the following challenge to Captain Capitalism:

What would a graph look like whose x-axis was the years 1776 through 2007 and y-axis was GDP (adjusted for inflation) divided by population? I am really curious to see what that looks like. My prediction is that it’d be a steady slope upwards with spikes during the industrial and information revolution. But I’m interested to see if any sort of correlation can be made with the “value” per capita and the expansion of the government, or if there are any other trends that can be culled.