Desire & Scarcity (was Re: Desire under the Elms)

[Brad De Long]

>On Fri, 28 Jan 2000, Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>  Or, as George Stigler put it:
>>
>>  "It would be easy to provide everyone with a physiologically adequate
>>  diet; for example, a [hu]man could perhaps live for a year on the
>>  following diet, at a cost of about $8 a month in 1950:
>>
>>	--370 pounds of wheat flour
>>	--57 cans of evaporated milk
>>	--111 pounds of cabbage
>>	--25 pounds of spinach
>>	--285 pounds of dried navy beans.
>
>I'm just curious -- without salt or oil or yeast, what are we supposed to
>be doing with the wheat flour?
>
>Michael

As Michael P. said, this is the solution to a linear programming 
problem, not a list of ingredients for a diet. The point is that it 
does so well at providing a bunch of nutrients in such an... 
unappetizing form.

Brad DeLong