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Living within a living, loving planet
Posts tagged wealth distribution
The Next Downturn
Jul 8th
Only 6 minutes and twenty four seconds “Human Population Through Time”
“It took 200,000 years for our population to reach 1 Billion and only 200 years to reach 7 Billion!!!! As our population has grown, so has our use of Earth’s resources. Choices we make today affect the future of our species and all life on Earth.”
If you don’t look at anything else today, please take the six minutes to view this video produced by the American Museum of Natural History. It doesn’t say who funded it!.
Next Downturn
Why The Next Downturn Will Be The Most Destructive In Modern History — And The
Why You Must Act Now In Order To Preserve Your Wealth (and the Planet!)
by Adam Taggart
Tuesday, May 7, 2019, 2:37 PM
Peak Prosperity
“Our society’s pursuit of endless economic growth is unsustainable.
We’re at the point where we’ve sabotaged our future by taking on too much debt, while at the same moment, we’ve started to run dangerously low on the resources necessary to run our modern way of living, straining key ecosystems in the process.
But rather than change our behavior, we’re doubling down on our faith in growth, creating dangerous financial bubbles that threaten to ruin our economy when they burst.
And worse than that, we’re depleting our remaining precious resources — such as energy deposits, rich topsoils, underground aquifers, ocean fisheries, key commercial minerals — at rates that can never recover in our lifetime.
At this stage, it’s unrealistic to expect our government to ride the rescue in time, if at all — even if it weren’t dysfunctionally focused on protecting the very status quo that’s killing us.
Instead, we need to become our own heroes.”
Can we Afford the Green New Deal?
Apr 6th
Can we afford the Green New Deal? Can there be a doubt?
How Large Are Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies?
“$5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP)”
Volume 91, March 2017, Pages 11-27
Author links open overlay panel: DavidCoady, IanParry, LouisSears, BaopingShang
Show more
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.10.004
Summary
“This paper estimates fossil fuel subsidies and the economic and environmental benefits from reforming them, focusing mostly on a broad notion of subsidies arising when consumer prices are below supply costs plus environmental costs and general consumption taxes.
Estimated subsidies are $4.9 trillion worldwide in 2013 and $5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP in both years). Undercharging for global warming accounts for 22% of the subsidy in 2013, air pollution 46%, broader vehicle externalities 13%, supply costs 11%, and general consumer taxes 8%. China was the biggest subsidizer in 2013 ($1.8 trillion), followed by the United States ($0.6 trillion), and Russia, the European Union, and India (each with about $0.3 trillion). Eliminating subsidies would have reduced global carbon emissions in 2013 by 21% and fossil fuel air pollution deaths 55%, while raising revenue of 4%, and social welfare by 2.2%, of global GDP.”
Photo from Pixabay
Lord give us this night our daily certainty
Mar 31st
“Give us God in whatever form She, He, It, or They consents to assume, so long as that transcendent something supplies us with an answer we can curl up around close enough to breathe ourselves to peace, or anyway to sleep. Lord give us this night our daily certainty.”
“The first step toward creating some way out of our dilemma may involve allowing our sense of certainty itself to unravel.”
https://emergencemagazine.org/story/the-religious-value-of-the-unknown/
George Prochnik
Our modern technology has given us a strong sense of certainty by its “swap the board” or “replace the unit” fix. Unfortunately, main stream science uses a mechanistic model as a basis for “fixing” climate change. Even the measurement devices are designed for machines instead of a living Earth; a living being. Homo Sapiens have never encountered the present level of CO2 and some other green-house gasses. CO2 is now building up in the troposphere at an increasing level and the rate of increase is increasing. Further the rate of increase is variable and unpredictable.
There is no certainty and no meaningful computer models to assist in predictability.
Of course, this is green fodder for those paid to spread fear and doubt thus discrediting 97% of climate scientists who know that humans are accountable for this runaway increase in CO2, warming of the oceans and melting of polar icecaps to name a few climate variables. We accept uncertainty when our physician prescribes a remedy and then tells us that if it doesn’t work we are to return for an alternative. However, there is no loss of profits in that situation whereas keeping fossil fuel in the ground might throw a few people off the billionaire list! Sky 31 March, 2019
Congress Gives Sacred Apache Land to Foreign Mining Company
Jul 30th
Congress Gives Sacred Apache Land to Foreign Mining Company
San Carlos Apache Leader Seeks Senate Defeat of Copper Mine on Sacred Land
http://www.whitewolfpack.com/2014/12/congress-gives-sacred-apache-land-to.html
“Congress is poised to give a foreign mining company 2,400 acres of national forest in Arizona that is cherished ancestral homeland to Apache natives. Controversially, the measure is attached to annual legislation that funds the US Defense Department.”
Trump’s U.S. Looks Past Energy Independence to Global Dominance
May 3rd
Bloomberg Climate Changed
https://www.bloomberg.com/climate-changed
Trump’s U.S. Looks Past Energy Independence to Global Dominance
by Laura Blewitt May 1, 2017, 11:43 PM GMT+1
It has been a few years since mining and drilling was all about US energy independence. At least, now the real reason has been unveiled. Yes, it is mostly about “energy-dominant” As usual, extractive industries will reap the profits whilst the public pay the price of medical bills and clean-up. Notice, “as companies cut costs”! That’s translated as fewer jobs and bigger and more expensive machines.
No longer do we need to be suspicious. The clarity is blinding. “U.S. exports surged above 1 million barrels a day for the first time.”
I remember reading a few years ago that Japan was importing wood pulp from Australia even though there were vast forests extant in Japan. Ever wonder why?
Now China is cutting back on coal production. Do we think this is foolish?
“The U.S. is in the position to be energy-dominant, not just independent, thanks to fracking and plans to loosen drilling regulations, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Monday.
Oil production across the U.S. may increase by 17 percent to a record 10.24 million barrels a day by the end of next year as companies cut costs and become more efficient in drilling, especially in areas such as West Texas and North Dakota. Domestic output hasn’t surpassed 10 million barrels a day since 1970. At a time when OPEC and other producers are cutting output, U.S. exports surged above 1 million barrels a day for the first time.”
The Grand Old Party in the USA
May 8th
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-36232280
“’I think what a lot of Republicans want to see is that we have a standard bearer that bears our standards.’ House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday,”
Perhaps “Republican Standards” are the standards of the rich and elite. American wealth is moving toward the few (.8% now) at an unprecedented rate of flow (up). American wage earners have experienced their standard of living dropping whilst Congress spends such a lot of time bickering and fighting each other. Perhaps the other 99.2% are just fed up.
For example: “For most workers, real wages have barely budged for decades”
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ and yet; there are now more than twice as many millionaire households than there were in 1996. http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/09/more-millionaires-than-ever-are-living-in-the-us.html
48.00% of Americans earn less than $25k a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
“In 2011, the majority of low-income working families (61 percent) spent more than one-third of their income on housing, exceeding an accepted guideline for what constitutes affordable housing.” http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2013/us-working-poor-families.aspx
A low-income family is: “those earning less than twice the federal poverty line. In 2011, the low-income threshold for a family of four with two children was $45,622.” That means the poverty level is $22,811. So nearly ½ of American families (2 adults and 2 children) are living in or very near poverty. “In 2011, the top 20 percent of working families received 10.1 times the total income received by the bottom 20 percent of working families, up from 9.5 in 2007.” I’m sure that in 2016 at least 50% of American families are earning below the poverty line.
For quite a while I’ve heard the over-ripe saying that “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” I always thought it was just an over exaggeration. Not anymore.
As I posted on Facebook Friday, “Fanaticism is bred by hopelessness and despair”
I think it is safe to say that almost half the American population despair of ever rising above the poverty line. Then along comes Trump! But Trump is a millionaire.
Does this really make any sense?
Keeping the Wild
Mar 21st
Keeping the Wild
This book might be a great help in understanding why humans are destroying Nature. The quote below makes a connection that has gone over my head until a few days ago.
“From time immemorial, just as today, the underclass and the powerless have been forcibly limited from accessing resources for their own material advantage. It is thus injustice toward the more-than-human world – stripping it into being-for and value-for people (“resources”) that constitutes the foundation of social injustice and inequality.” Eileen Crist in “Keeping the Wild”
This book might be a great help in understanding why humans are destroying Nature. Is it not rather bizarre and crazy-making that whilst we, as just one species of many, have given ourselves the right to slash and burn, poison and desecrate as we choose whilst energetic and physical essence that we depend on for our very existence has no rights whatsoever?
With Wealth comes Power
Nov 3rd
With wealth comes power
“When I started to look at what we are doing—the numbers were so boggling. I did some long division to make it more understandable. It came down to every four to four-and-a-half days, there’s a million more of us on the planet. That just doesn’t seem like a sustainable figure, and that’s pretty much where we are unless we start to do something about it.”
A CONVERSATION WITH ALAN WEISMAN http://littlebrown.com/countdown.html
John Kerry: “The future… will be defined by the combination of stability and economic growth”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24793814
(Sky:) Economic growth for whom? Every four-and-a-half days, there’s 990,000 more of us who will see poverty in their lifetimes.
“The remaining 91.6 percent of humanity splits around 17 percent of the wealth.”
“The planet overall minted around 2 million new millionaires last year.”
http://www.alternet.org/economy/point-seveners-new-name-millionaires-club
“Taken together, the bottom half of the global population own less than 1 percent of total wealth. In sharp contrast, the richest 10 percent hold 86 percent of the world’s wealth, and the top 1 percent alone account for 46 percent of global assets.”
Make the rich pair their fair share of taxes
Feb 7th
How To Avoid Raising Taxes on the Middle Class or Cutting Programs the Middle and Poor Depend On
By Robert Reich
Nation of Change
“The real median wage is only slightly higher now than it was 30 years ago, even though the economy is twice as large.”
“Wealth has become even more concentrated than income (income is a stream of money, wealth is the pool into which it flows).
The richest 1 percent now own more than 35 percent of all of the nation’s household wealth, and 38 percent of the nation’s financial assets – including stocks and pension funds.
Think about this: The richest 400 Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together. The 6 Walmart heirs have more wealth than bottom 33 million American families combined.
So why are we even contemplating cutting programs the middle class and poor depend on, and raising their taxes?
We should tax the vast accumulations of wealth now in the hands of a relative few.”
Why do we vote for millionaires who then write bills that further their aims to become billionaires?
I’m sorry, perhaps I misspelled Democracy.
“Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía); from ὀλίγος (olígos), meaning “few”, and ἄρχω (archo), meaning “to rule or to command”)[1][2][3] is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy