Green New Deal

[nwdiver]

Screw the rich!
I mean the really rich!
No, I mean the really really really rich!
Actually, I mean really really really super uber rich!
Ya, now I got it, that's it!

I have nothing against the rich. My point is that we need to leave ideology at the door and look at the economy more dispassionately especially as automation takes off. If we have a manufacturing capacity of ~$10T/yr and wages to workers of $100B/yr with $8T/yr going to 10% that owns ~90% of production and ~$2T/yr going to 40% that owns 10% and ~30% of the population getting nothing... that's a problem. We need to have policies that prevent loss of demand due to loss of employment creating a death spiral....

We need to decouple labor from income for EVERYONE not just those fortunate enough to have been born into the right family....

 

[juliusa]

Meanwhile, back to reality: 3.7% unemployment. 7M job openings. Rising wages.

Now how about we talk about how to save the planet from greenhouse gases and global warming?

 

[nwdiver]

Meanwhile, back to reality: 3.7% unemployment. 7M job openings. Rising wages.

Now how about we talk about how to save the planet from greenhouse gases and global warming?

Yes... back to reality...

What should we tell the coal dependent communities? Somehow economics will save them? They just need to have faith in Ayn Rand?

 

[JRP3]

Meanwhile, back to reality: 3.7% unemployment. 7M job openings. Rising wages.

Back to reality, under employment and state mandated increases in minimum wages, (at least in the more populated, progressive states).

 

[juliusa]

Graph disproves your theory. Seems the economy can handle labor particpation rate much lower than we have today.

Oh - look at this. Seems the economy is humming along just fine even as the labor participation rate declined.

oh - look at this. Labor participation rate has been flat for 6 years. Economy seems to be doing just fine.

 

[juliusa]

Computers and robots have been replacing people for decades. It is been a huge boon to productivity and the economy. Can you show me where it has impacted employment rates on this chart? Notice the INCREASING employment rate for the past 10 years, and we are now ABOVE the historical average. Seems we have been adding MORE than 1 job for every job lost to robots over the past decade.

It also seems the economy can function at much lower employment rates - look at 1950 to 1980.

 

[nativewolf]

Somewhere in there the statisticians are probably scrambling to account for stay at home moms, etc. Teens used to work but rarely rarely have part time jobs now due to the insane idea that after school activities somehow impact college (the fact that they do is so so so sad) admissions.

As a small business owner I struggle, struggle to find workers. I might spend 20% of my time trying. It is not salary related, I simply can't find employees I can hire and trust to do the job. I can pay basically a $40/hour take home wage to a blue collar worker if I find someone. Bonus, etc are there too. This is for a position in Rural Virginia, cost of housing is low, basically rent a quite decent home for 3-4 days wages. Can buy a decent home and 5 acres for 250k all day long, less if your are not picky about the home. Double that and you have a 50 acre woodland or small farm.

In my industry I am about as green and conservationist oriented as the come but I cringe when I hear some of the people talking about green new deal. If we really want to do something green then tax the hell out of Data centers and Distribution centers that are swallowing americas farmland. That would be a good first step. Force distribution centers back into cities in brownfields. Open immigration back up but make it legal. I'd sponser 3 employees today if I could find them.

 

[mspohr]

Climate change is morally wrong. It is time for a carbon abolition movement | Eric Beinhocker

Human-induced climate change is a moral wrong. It involves one group of humans harming others. People of this generation harming those in future generations. People in the developed world harming those in the developing world. Each of us is emitting carbon that is harming those caught in climate-driven superstorms, floods, droughts and conflicts. And there’s the greatest moral wrong of all – the mass extinction event we have triggered that harms all life on Earth.

Yet until recently, climate change has not been argued as a moral issue. Rather, it has been presented as a technocratic problem, a cost-benefit problem, where the costs of action must be weighed against the benefits of avoiding disaster. The debates have been around taxes, jobs, growth and technologies. While such debates are important – there are better and worse ways to tackle the climate crisis – the effect has been decades of inaction, denial and delay. When something is a moral wrong, particularly a deep, systemic moral wrong, we don’t wait around debating the optimal path or policy; we stop it.

 

[mspohr]

Enter the Capitalocene: How Climate Change Will Ruin Capitalism

But let’s not lose sight of the root cause of this crisis: rampant capitalism. Capitalism has steamrolled this planet and its organisms, gouging out mountains, overexploiting fish stocks, and burning fossil fuels to power the maniacal pursuit of growth and enrich a fraction of humanity. Since 1988, 100 corporations have been responsible for 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

Jason Moore: Capitalocene is a kind of critical provocation to this sensibility of the anthropocene, which is: We have met the enemy and he is us. So the idea that we're all going to cover our footprints, we're going to be more sustainable consumers, we're going to pay attention to population, are really consequences of a highly unequal system of power and wealth.

Out there in the culture, we think of capitalism as entrepreneurial and risk-taking and innovative, and that sometimes is the case but only within a very, very narrow frame. And we're talking about huge existential transformations of the earth.

Moments of climate change become moments of climate crisis, and that's in the relatively milder climate shifts of the holocene, which is now over. Capitalism is not going to survive, but it also depends on what we mean by capitalism. For me, capitalocene is a critique of this idea that capitalism is just about economics. Because it's also a system of power and it's a system of culture.

Moore: You would have to have a democratically controlled accumulation fund. I think that banking and finance have to be socialized because otherwise you're continually at the mercy of big capital deciding what's profitable or not.

 

[nwdiver]

Graph disproves your theory. Seems the economy can handle labor particpation rate much lower than we have today.
View attachment 456967
Oh - look at this. Seems the economy is humming along just fine even as the labor participation rate declined.
View attachment 456968

oh - look at this. Labor participation rate has been flat for 6 years. Economy seems to be doing just fine.
View attachment 456969

.......

Labor force participation is the number of people working at it's at its lowest level since the end of the Vietnam War (I don't believe this number includes Military either). Unemployment also doesn't include people that are 'underemployed'.

I checked... it LFP does not include military and some sources say it doesn't include students. It was lower in the 70s because of the Vietnam War. Regardless... the problem isn't where we are in 2019 but where we're likely to be in 10-20 years.

Civilian non-institutional population - Everyone living in the United States who is 16 or older minus inmates of institutions such as prisons, nursing homes, and mental hospitals and minus those on active duty in the Armed Forces.​

 

[SDRick]

"As one recent study has shown, 71 percent of global emissions can be traced back to the activities of just 100 mega-corporations".

If we could just get people to stop buying what they're selling...

 

[jerry33]

"As one recent study has shown, 71 percent of global emissions can be traced back to the activities of just 100 mega-corporations".

If we could just get people to stop buying what they're selling...

Of course, it might be nice to know which 100.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Out there in the culture, we think of capitalism as entrepreneurial and risk-taking and innovative, and that sometimes is the case but only within a very, very narrow frame. And we're talking about huge existential transformations of the earth.

Pure Capitalism in Germany fueled the entire global renewables revolution of the last 20 years. What needs to end is the corruption making US Capitalism work only for the very few.

 

[nwdiver]

Pure Capitalism in Germany fueled the entire global renewables revolution of the last 20 years.

Not sure you can call a government mandated feed-in-tariff 'pure capitalism'...

 

[SageBrush]

Not sure you can call a government mandated feed-in-tariff 'pure capitalism'...

You can if you view it as an offset to externalized costs.

 

[nwdiver]

You can if you view it as an offset to externalized costs.

Maybe... bit of a semantic argument but I think anytime government internalizes external costs its no longer 'pure' capitalism. In 'pure' capitalism the market not government would 'internalize' external costs.

 

[juliusa]

the problem isn't where we are in 2019 but where we're likely to be in 10-20 years.

Ok, then let's start thinking about in 25 years so when it "might" happen in 50 years we are prepared.

 

[d21mike]

Ok, then let's start thinking about in 25 years so when it "might" happen in 50 years we are prepared.

I agree. Climate Change is now all about politics and not a serious problem.

What I expect to happen over the next 5 years there will be a huge move towards EV's. Not because of Climate Change but because the technology is so much better. And then people will want to drive free with Solar and the move to install more and more Solar.

This will automatically happen over the next 25 years without any over blown help from the politicians.

 

[JRP3]

The politicians have already helped with policies, loans and incentives, all of which helped spur the move to EV's, renewables, and the advancement of the technologies.

 

[Unpilot]

The politicians have already helped with policies, loans and incentives, all of which helped spur the move to EV's, renewables, and the advancement of the technologies.

Of course Without Obama we would not have trump. But can you imagine the state of Renewables without the push from policy's put in place by President Obama?

If we had the OI first we would be in much worse shape now.

Policy does matter.