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Showing posts with label World Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World Economy. Show all posts

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Growing Economies Without Growing Emissions

The world economy grew last year without carbon emissions.

Still, evidence of cleaner economic growth is exciting for those who work on a challenge as immense and protracted as global climate change. The news is well timed, too: Nations are developing their climate plans ahead of international negotiations in Paris this December. Progress on emissions – however slight – shows world leaders that “this is a doable thing that the world can work on together,” says Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute, a climate research organization based in Washington. “This should give them confidence that they can meet their emissions targets and still grow their economies,” Ms. Morgan says.

This is most welcome news considering that naysayers on all sides said it wasn't possible. The people who continue to deny that man made climate change is real and that the renewable energy market isn't feasible look pretty silly right now. Equally as silly are those who think that we aren't doing enough. Stories like this:

Georgetown Goes All In on Renewable Energy

make them look even more silly. We can add Georgetown, Texas to Burlington, Vermont as cities that have gone 100 percent renewable.

By the mid part of this century, the manufactured debate about climate change will be moot.


Friday, May 23, 2014

What Would A Libertarian Do?

The recent 30 year natural gas deal between Russia and China has me wondering....what would a libertarian president do about this? Given their isolationist tendencies, they would likely do nothing and let the free market do what it will.

But is that effective in the age of globalization? And does it leave the United States more vulnerable from the standpoint of economic competition (i.e. the new "world war")?

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Unsustainable

OXFAM International just released a staggering report on inequality in the world. Here are the highlights.

• Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population.

• The wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.

• The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.

• Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.

• The richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries for which we have data between 1980 and 2012.

• In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer.

The world economy simply cannot be sustained with this level of inequality. Demand is not where it should be and this is exactly why. If this gap continues to widen, demand will fall and more people will have less money as smaller businesses collapse.

Check out this video clip below from "Morning Joe" which illustrates how this is no longer a left-right divide.

 

Joe sounds quite a bit like Ronald Reagan in that 1986 speech I cite often. Note that they discuss how it isn't simply one issue like the tax code or the minimum wage but many issues that have coalesced into a fundamental systemic failure.

Barack Obama came to Washington to change it and this could be just the issue to do it. My colleagues on the Right and in the Tea Party assure me that they loathe the political and aristocratic class and its rent seeking as much as I do. So, what are we going to do about it?