TMC is an independent, primarily volunteer organization that relies on ad revenue to cover its operating costs. Please consider whitelisting TMC on your ad blocker and becoming a Supporting Member. For more info: Support TMC
  1. TMC is currently READ ONLY.
    Click here for more info.

Green New Deal

Discussion in 'Energy, Environment, and Policy' started by mspohr, Dec 14, 2018.

  1. mspohr

    mspohr Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 27, 2014
    Messages:
    8,943
    Location:
    California
    The Plot to Help America’s Children Opinion | The Plot to Help America’s Children

    Furthermore, there’s extensive evidence that the real source of the “poverty trap” isn’t lack of incentives, it’s lack of the resources needed for adequate nutrition, health care, housing and more. As a result, helping poor children doesn’t just improve their lives in the short run, it helps them escape poverty.

    What seems clear is that the real reason many on the right oppose helping children is that they fear that such help might make low-income families less desperate. And the very reason they hate this proposal is the reason the rest of us should love it.






     
    • Like x 4
  2. mspohr

    mspohr Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 27, 2014
    Messages:
    8,943
    Location:
    California
    ‘There’s No Natural Dignity in Work’ Opinion | ‘There’s No Natural Dignity in Work’
    Punishing mothers for needing help cannot be the answer. A generous child allowance might be.
    But I want to consider the deeper question here: Even if a child allowance would lead some parents to drop out of the formal work force, would that be a bad thing? Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor. The problem lurks in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care, full time, for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore my child, there is absolutely no doubt I’d be working harder. I’d have fewer days off, a more demanding boss and worse pay.
     
    • Like x 2
  3. navguy12

    navguy12 Member

    Joined:
    Apr 5, 2016
    Messages:
    545
    Location:
    Eastern Ontario
    Yet another example of an unrecognized "externality" that keeps everything going...
     
    • Like x 1
  4. CrazyRabbit

    CrazyRabbit Member

    Joined:
    Apr 21, 2020
    Messages:
    304
    Location:
    Fort Worth TX
    in Russia prior during the period of 1910-1946, if you didn't work you starved to death.

    simply put, there is not enough money to pay people a guaranteed income. Canada tried it, they had to terminate the program as it grew out of control.
     
  5. mspohr

    mspohr Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 27, 2014
    Messages:
    8,943
    Location:
    California
    Biden Is Going Big, and Americans Are With Him Opinion | Biden Is Going Big, and Americans Are With Him

    Biden is listening to whispers from the grave of Franklin Roosevelt — laying out a society-changing plan of action at a low ebb in the nation’s history. Facing the largest social and economic crisis since the Great Depression, Biden’s hoping to significantly reduce child poverty, expand health care and fortify working-class families.
    But make no mistake: The public is with Biden now. The Covid-19 relief package — with its direct payments to families and aid for businesses, the unemployed and local governments — is backed by nearly 70 percent of Americans, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. In a nation that can’t agree on a simple set of facts, this is staggering. Two-thirds of Americans supported raising the federal minimum wage before the pandemic, By August, that figure had risen to 72 percent. That level of support has only gone up since Covid set in, as people realize that many of their beloved essential workers have been living on poverty-level wages.But make no mistake: The public is with Biden now. The Covid-19 relief package — with its direct payments to families and aid for businesses, the unemployed and local governments — is backed by nearly 70 percent of Americans, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. In a nation that can’t agree on a simple set of facts, this is staggering. Two-thirds of Americans supported raising the federal minimum wage before the pandemic, By August, that figure had risen to 72 percent. That level of support has only gone up since Covid set in, as people realize that many of their beloved essential workers have been living on poverty-level wages.
    Biden’s plan to provide tax credits in the form of payments of up to $300 per month to poor families could lift 10 million children above or closer to the poverty line. People who have long argued that the best way to help the poor is simply to give them money are going to have their moment.
     
    • Like x 1
  6. mspohr

    mspohr Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 27, 2014
    Messages:
    8,943
    Location:
    California
    #3706 mspohr, Feb 19, 2021
    Last edited: Feb 19, 2021
    The Republicans found plenty of money to give rich people a big tax cut. There is plenty of money to give people food, shelter health care and education.
     
    • Like x 3
    • Love x 3
  7. navguy12

    navguy12 Member

    Joined:
    Apr 5, 2016
    Messages:
    545
    Location:
    Eastern Ontario
    Source?
     
  8. ItsNotAboutTheMoney

    ItsNotAboutTheMoney Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 12, 2012
    Messages:
    10,212
    Location:
    Maine
  9. nwdiver

    nwdiver Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 17, 2013
    Messages:
    7,360
    Location:
    United States
    Is there a shortage of zeros? Here's one... '0'... here's ten more '0000000000'. Plenty of zeros. It's literally impossible for the US to 'run out of money' :)

    The only problem is inflation when you add zeros. And last I checked most (all) economists are saying we need more inflation right now not less.
     
    • Like x 1
  10. navguy12

    navguy12 Member

    Joined:
    Apr 5, 2016
    Messages:
    545
    Location:
    Eastern Ontario
    Here is the actual program termination paragraph from the article for context:

    However, it was abruptly stopped in 1979, a casualty of the political and economic turmoil of the mid-to late-1970s. A series of oil price shocks had led to rampant inflation and increasing levels of unemployment. This meant that by 1979, far more families in Dauphin were seeking assistance than the experiment had budgeted for, while the scheme’s payouts were rising with the inflation rate.

    I remember when the cost of primary energy skyrocketed in the mid and late 70s. That was the era of "stagflation" and the use of high interest rates to quell it. We had a mortgage that was north of 15% interest rate.

    So it is correct that the program was terminated because of the unintended effects of historically high interest rates and a doubling (IIRC) of energy prices.

    Some other quotes from the article:

    There was an 8.5% decline in hospitalisations – primarily because there were fewer alcohol-related accidents and hospitalisations due to mental health issues – and a reduction in visits to family physicians.

    Joy Taylor, who was 18 and newly married when the scheme began, remembers that people had much less to worry about financially during the course of the experiment, which improved their wellbeing. Her husband was suddenly able to get a loan to open a local record store, with banks being more willing to lend money to small businesses because of the guaranteed payments.


    There was also an increase in the number of adolescents completing high school. Before and after the experiment, Dauphin students – like many in rural towns across Manitoba – were less likely to finish school than those in the city of Winnipeg, with boys often leaving at 16 and getting jobs on farms or in factories. However, over the course of those four years, they were actually more likely to graduate than Winnipeg students. In 1976, 100% of Dauphin students enrolled for their final year of school.


    “Very often these people were the first in their family who’d ever finished high school,” says Forget. “When Mincome came along, families decided they could support their sons in school just a little bit longer, and, in some ways, I think that’s the most exciting result because we saw that investment in human capital.”


    Other families who were on the programme at the time remember that certain things were suddenly more affordable. For Eric Richardson, the youngest of six children who was aged 10 when the experiment began, the introduction of basic income meant a trip to the dentist for the first time. “Normally, you didn’t get to go until you were old enough )o pay for it yourself,” he says. “I remember it very well because I had 10 cavities and our dentist would drill your teeth without freezing.”


    And when the program was ended:

    But when the experiment ended in 1979, the improvements which had been seen in health and education soon returned to how things had been in 1974. Taylor remembers how many of the small businesses that had sprung up over the preceding four years began to vanish. Her husband was forced to close their shop, and the couple soon left Dauphin for good.

    So I'm going to go on a limb here: if/if the prime interest rate wasn't north of 12% AND primary energy costs hadn't doubled, we would have a program that lasted long enough to have good, solid long term data on avoided social costs, etc.

    With the age of renewable energy now here, we will never see an increase in the cost of energy for the rest of our lives.

    I'm also pretty sure prime rates will not be jacked up into the mid double digits.

    So, with the two primary reasons that were the catalyst for ending the original program no longer a concern, I would say that using the termination of this particular UBI example as proof that it doesn't work is not a valid argument.
     
    • Like x 4
  11. mspohr

    mspohr Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 27, 2014
    Messages:
    8,943
    Location:
    California
    Why Texas Republicans Fear the Green New Deal Opinion | Why Texas Republicans Fear the Green New Deal

    But weather alone did not cause this crisis. Texans are living through the collapse of a 40-year experiment in free-market fundamentalism, one that has also stood in the way of effective climate action. Fortunately, there’s a way out — and that’s precisely what Republican politicians in the state most fear.
    A fateful series of decisions were made in the late-’90s, when the now-defunct, scandal-plagued energy company Enron led a successful push to radically deregulate Texas’s electricity sector. As a result, decisions about the generation and distribution of power were stripped from regulators and, in effect, handed over to private energy companies. Unsurprisingly, these companies prioritized short-term profit over costly investments to maintain the grid and build in redundancies for extreme weather.

    To explain this phenomenon, I often quote a guru of the free market revolution, the late economist Milton Friedman. In 1982, he wrote about what he saw as the mission of right-wing economists like him: “Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
    The horrors currently unfolding in Texas expose both the reality of the climate crisis and the extreme vulnerability of fossil fuel infrastructure in the face of that crisis. So of course the Green New Deal finds itself under fierce attack. Because for the first time in a long time, Republicans face the very thing that they claim to revere but never actually wanted: competition — in the battle of ideas.
     
    • Like x 1
  12. jerry33

    jerry33 (S85-3/2/13 traded in) X LR: F2611##-3/27/20

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2012
    Messages:
    19,487
    Location:
    Texas
    That's only part of the story. The more important part is that the Fossil Fuel industry talked (paid) the Texas Legislature into declaring battery storage as an electricity producing device. What this means is that the middle tier (OnCore and similar companies which deliver the electricity to the consumer) is prevented from implementing battery storage to level the load and provide backup. All so that the peaker plants can charge the maximum amount when there is an issue. Had this legislation not been enacted, At least some of the middle tier companies would have battery storage. OnCore was going to purchase quite a bit of battery storage from Tesla, but the Legislators rushed the bill in to block the sale. OnCore does have a tiny amount of battery storage, but they have to be very sure that none of it leaks out to the grid.
     
    • Informative x 2
  13. mspohr

    mspohr Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 27, 2014
    Messages:
    8,943
    Location:
    California
    Covid and the climate crisis show why we need a new social contract between old and young | Minouche Shafik
    We must also do as much as we can to redress environmental damage. A good start would be to eliminate the $4-6 trillion in annual government subsidies to agriculture, water, fisheries and fossil fuels that actively encourage the exploitation of the environment. These subsidies mean it is not just free for companies to deplete the natural world, the taxpayer actually pays for them to do it. There needs to more investment in conservation and restoration of the biosphere, such as planting trees. Current public and private spending on conservation is about $91bn, less than 2% of what is spent on subsidies to degrade the environment. The next step is to measure things properly: where market prices do not convey the true value of environmental services, we must find other ways to factor them into our calculations and decisions. Finally, governments should use fiscal policy to change incentives, such as taxing carbon or incentivising green technologies.
     
    • Like x 2
  14. mspohr

    mspohr Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 27, 2014
    Messages:
    8,943
    Location:
    California
    The Paradox of Pandemic Partisanship Opinion | The Paradox of Pandemic Partisanship

    President Biden’s Covid-19 relief proposal remains incredibly popular; if anything, it’s getting more popular as it barrels through Congress. Multiple polls show that something like 70 percent of Americans approve of the $1.9 trillion plan.
    And Republicans also spent years denouncing Obamacare as a tyrannical job-killer, while they’ve barely mentioned the significant expansion in Obamacare that is contained within the Biden proposal.
     
    • Like x 1
  15. mspohr

    mspohr Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 27, 2014
    Messages:
    8,943
    Location:
    California
    If Government Did Its Job We Might Not Need GoFundMe Opinion | If Government Did Its Job We Might Not Need GoFundMe
    The House has just passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill which is now pending Senate approval. GoFundMe C.E.O. Tim Cadogan hopes the package will alleviate some of the economic pain of the pandemic. Activity on his crowdfunding platform has surged in the wake of Covid-19, with users turning to GoFundMe to help pay for everything from rent to funeral services. Cadogan would rather that the government — not his company — play this role. “This is a war against a virus,” he says. “If this were a war against another country at this scale, it would be no question what we would do, right? We would mobilize our society to defeat it.” On this episode of “Sway,” Kara Swisher asks him what GoFundMe’s data reveals about gaps in America’s social safety net and how he thinks about content moderation when it's money, and not just ideas, in play.
     
    • Like x 1
  16. eevee-fan

    eevee-fan Active Member

    Joined:
    Dec 2, 2019
    Messages:
    1,165
    Location:
    Nevada
     
    • Like x 2
  17. mspohr

    mspohr Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 27, 2014
    Messages:
    8,943
    Location:
    California
    • Informative x 1
    • Like x 1

Share This Page

  • About Us

    Formed in 2006, Tesla Motors Club (TMC) was the first independent online Tesla community. Today it remains the largest and most dynamic community of Tesla enthusiasts. Learn more.
  • Do you value your experience at TMC? Consider becoming a Supporting Member of Tesla Motors Club. As a thank you for your contribution, you'll get nearly no ads in the Community and Groups sections. Additional perks are available depending on the level of contribution. Please visit the Account Upgrades page for more details.


    SUPPORT TMC