Issue 1, Fall 1990

William A. McEachern, Editor

For Your Evidence File

The revolution in Eastern Europe has uncovered the deplorable environmental conditions in many of these countries. In Poland, for example, half of the bodies of water are reportedly too polluted even for industrial use, and East Germany has been called an environmental disaster area. It is ironic that these once socialist systems apparently did a worse job protecting the public from pollution than more market-oriented systems.

• Trading goods across national borders is much easier than trading services. After all, we can't import haircuts from Taiwan. This in part explains why jobs at General Motors, but not jobs at McDonald's, have been lost to imports. Yet international sales of services is growing. When Americans vacation overseas, they consume services produced by foreigners. To reduce costs, some U.S. insurance companies now fly their claim forms by overnight pouch to countries such as Ireland, where the paperwork is processed and flown back to the United States.

• Students usually seem interested in the fortunes of the rich and the famous. Forbes Magazine (Oct 1, 1990) has ranked entertainers by combined income for 1989 and 1990 as follows:
  
  
  1. Bill Cosby: $115M
  2. Michael Jackson: $100M
  3. The Rolling Stones: $88M
  4. Steven Spielberg: $87M
  5. New Kids on the Block: $78M
  6. Oprah Winfrey: $68M
  7. Sylvester Stallone: $63M
  8. Madonna: $62M
  9. Arnold Schwarzenegger: $55M
  10. Charles Schulz ($54M)

• Speaking of money, Forbes (July 25, 1990) identifies Taikichiro Mori as the second richest person in the world as of 1990. He is a retired economics professor who earned nearly $15 billion by wisely anticipating the skyrocketing value of real estate in Japan. Mori might be a good answer to the amusing question, "If economists are so smart, why aren't they rich?"

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