Who is going to support national health and welfare with fewer workers?

Seems to me this is a dumb question. No offense - you aren't the only one asking it - but it seems like a made-up issue. If there are fewer workers and more work to go around, wages will rise. So instead of two nurses making $50,000 a year, we'll be down to one making $100,000. The tax haul remains the same though. There's still just as much money to support pensions and such, only it's coming from fewer workers.

So there is no looming "crisis", except for the very wealthy of course, especially those living primarily off of inherited wealth or investments. With the cost of labor rising there won't be anymore cheap maids and gardeners for them. Pardon me while I play the world's tiniest violin.

Beyond that, as labor presumably gets scarce and wages and benefits rise we'll probably see more couples opt to have children earlier, as they'll represent less of a financial and/or career burden. France is already exceeding population projections from just a few years ago, thanks to an increased birth rate among natives. My guess is other European nations will start to see similar trends emerge.

I do wish people would stop drawing conclusions from simplistic models like this map. The entire model should take into account cost of real estate

They do have maps, at that site, which show the combined cost of housing and transportation expenses. Suburbia looks just as bad even then.

Is a low-carbon existence worth spending $347 or higher per square foot for living space?

It is if the increased cost of housing is offset by decreased transportation expenses (and/or decreased transit time - time is money).

Yeah, I know people own urban property. But either it's tiny, really crap quality, in an unsafe neighborhood

And this is different from suburban property these days HOW exactly?

how may days can you survive without any food deliveries to the city assuming 1800 calories per person per day.

How many days will suburbia last without any food deliveries? And where's the big money concentrated to buy food in the first place? Oh yeah, the city. Food - like most goods and services - tends to be attracted toward money.

Additional issues to consider our evacuation in case of disaster

Road and transit lines converge in big cities. My guess is you'd stand a better chance getting out of a big city than you would getting out of suburbia - especially if your evacuation route out of suburbia crosses thru other suburbs or, worse, the city itself.

we saw how bad things screwed up with Katrina

People who were formerly clueless saw how bad off you are if you're really poor in this country. The rest of us knew it all along.

Think ahead about how mass transit systems will fail in the disaster and how many people will be stranded in the city without food and possibly without water.

And you think suburbia would be any better off? What happens if the freeways go down and/or the utilities are cut and/or you don't have enough gas in your car to get anywhere? At least in the city you can walk from area to area looking for resources. Good luck walking around suburbia.

rail-based transport is incredibly fragile and very difficult to repair. Remember, only takes a couple of people to completely disrupt a rail line.

Yeah, and roads are less fragile how exactly? You could cripple Los Angeles traffic (even worse than it is already) by knocking out a single key interchange. Bridges also present a major vulnerability for suburban traffic, where applicable. Rail lines can also be quickly repaired - roads aren't so easy to fix. And without gasoline your roads are useless. What happens to suburbia if there's a major blackout, everyone's stuck in crippling traffic trying to evacuate and people start to run out of gas (no electricity = no gas pumps)? People in suburbia are far more vulnerable to disruptions due to retail fuel shortages than people in the city, who have alternatives.

So nursing homes will just have to cut their staffing requirements in half and pay the remaining twice as much and the problem is solved?

That's pretty much it, yup. Fewer Indians, more Chiefs. Increased use of automation, increased demand for educated workers (or increased worker training and education), higher wages and fewer bodies.

Go to a hog farm, gourmands; I'll bet even you will cry your eyes out.

Not for long. Then they'll collapse from the stench.

The huge cattle lots make beef equally unappealing.

Good people skills, empathy, common sense and judgment don't get one into medical school.

And that fact rests at the heart of what's wrong with medical care in this country. When you develop a system which selects for assholes who don't require a lot of sleep to function, you end up with the mess we've got today. It's a miracle any good doctors slip thru the system - which is probably the point. If caring, sociable, smart, balanced people suddenly made up the bulk of caregivers, there would be a revolution and the HMOs and other corporate pigs at the healthcare trough would find their throats slit.

Had never occurred to me that ABBA carried on the vocal traditions of The Mamas & The Papas, but you're right - there are a lot of similarities there.

I'd argue that Fleetwood Mac were The Mamas & The Papas of the 1970's though, right down to practically everyone in the band sleeping with each other. It's just that with Mac, the gal with the big voice was also the band's sex symbol.

"The earth as a whole is getting more and more religious. But it has nonetheless become more and more preoccupied with conflict."

Nonetheless?