TIGERHAWK LOOKS AT POPULATION AND WARMAKING:

In 1967, at the height of the battle for Vietnam in the middle of World War III,1 we had 1.7% of our population under arms, or approximately 3.4 million people. Today, while waging two wars in Asia at what many of us fear is not the height of World War IV, we have less than 0.5% of our population under arms. Point is, the present conflict may be pushing the limits of our existing military, but it has barely burdened us a society. With our modern willingness to open virtually all missions to women and recognize the value of soldiers in their “late youth,” we obviously could build a much larger military if we wanted to.2

The other circled table, relating to the cost of gasoline, is typical New York Times legerdemain. The Times has chosen to show us a two-month old price of gasoline ($3.07), so it has grossly distorted the real increase in gasoline prices in the last 40 years. In fact, the average price of gasoline at the pump was only $2.31 as of October 2, the last week that government data are available. That would have shown very little difference in real terms from 1967, only about 15% over 40 years. Given the massive expansion of world oil consumption in that period, that small real increase reveals the extraordinary productivity of the oil industry, which is driven primarily by technology from American companies such as, er, Halliburton. In any case, cynics will speculate that the Times chose to husband the resources of its graphic arts department rather than correct the chart because the facts undermine the NYT’s political objectives.

Heh. There’s a lot of that going on lately.

UPDATE: Related post here.