Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: May 2019 Page 3 of 4

Say Goodbye to Permafrost (And Civilization)?

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On May 13, 2019

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Globe on FireSo, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are now higher than they have ever been since homo sapiens have existed.

Meanwhile, on Russia’s arctic coast, which is permafrost, the temperature is 29C, 84F.

That means the permafrost is melting.

Because we continue to pump green house gasses out, because every scenario includes more significant warning, I will state again: We are not going to avoid permafrost melting.

Permafrost holds vast amounts of methane. Methane is, short term, a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

This will likely then lead to methane releases from arctic seas. It will lead to faster melting of glaciers and polar and antarctic ice. As oceans warm, they will expand further, leading to sea level rises.

Increased temperatures will lead to even more extreme weather events such as category 6 hurricanes.

We will see changes in weather patterns and so on.

But the key point is that we are about to hit the accelerator, and there is no actual possibility of avoiding it, which will almost certainly lead to exponential, uncontrolled increases in climate change.

We are, for all practical purposes, past the point of no return. We will lose our coastal cities, for example, the only question is when. The glaciers and snowcaps in most of the world will go away, leading to many rivers drying up.

Etc, etc…

Climate change is not a question, it is a certainty, and the question is not, “Will it be bad?” but “How bad?”

The answer is, almost certainly, “Very, very bad.”

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 11, 2019

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On May 12, 2019

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 11, 2019

This post is by Tony Wikrent

[CommonDreams.com, via Avedon’s Sideshow 4-28-19]

“The phrase is code for elites being pressured in ways they don’t like, and is often a shield against legitimate criticism of corruption or dependence on corporate power.”

Strategic Political Economy

[Ian Welsh, May 10, 2019]

You cannot have a good economy, where executives plan for the future, unless they need their companies to continue to do well. That means high progressive tax rates on income, on capital gains AND on unrealized capital and wealth, with no loops.

Taxes on unrealized capital gains and wealth are necessary because if you don’t do that rich types don’t cash out capital, instead they use loans to pay their bills. When you’re worth 500 million or even just a 100 million, banks are happy to lend, at under 2%.

And this week, the perfect example of how a republic that does not throttle the rich has its economic policy severely distorted: 

“How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country” 

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 5-7-19]

“At the heart of their effort is a network of activists who use a sophisticated data service built by the Kochs, called i360, that helps them identify and rally voters who are inclined to their worldview. It is a particularly powerful version of the technologies used by major political parties*. In places like Nashville, Koch-financed activists are finding tremendous success. Early polling here had suggested that the $5.4 billion transit plan would easily pass. It was backed by the city’s popular mayor and a coalition of businesses. Its supporters had outspent the opposition, and Nashville was choking on cars. But the outcome of the May 1 ballot stunned the city: a landslide victory for the anti-transit camp, which attacked the plan as a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.”

High Speed Rail– A Much Greener Way To Travel Than Airplane Or Auto… And Some Special Interests Opposing It
[DownWithTyranny, May 11, 2019]

Yesterday CNBC carried a very interesting piece on high peed rail– and why the U.S. has fallen so woefully behind other nations. Jeniece Pettitt and Adam Isaak compared the U.S. to other countries: “China has the world’s fastest and largest high-speed rail network– more than 19,000 miles, the vast majority of which was built in the past decade. Japan’s bullet trains can reach nearly 200 miles per hour and date to the 1960s. They have moved more than 9 billion people without a single passenger casualty. France began service of the high-speed TGV train in 1981 and the rest of Europe quickly followed… When the high speed rail between Madrid and Barcelona in Spain came into operation, air traffic just plummeted between those cities and everyone switched over to high speed rail which is very convenient. People were happy to do it; they weren’t forced to switch. They did it because it was a nicer option to take high speed rail.

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It Is Impossible to Control Corporations Without 90%+ Progressive Tax Rates

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On May 10, 2019

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Probably 95 percent on any income over about a million, 90 percent on anything over 500K, honestly.

Dick Fuld earned about $69.5 million in 2007, the year before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in Sept. 2008. From 2000 to 2007, he was awarded about $889.5 million and cashed out about $529 million of that before the company went bankrupt.”

Why would Fuld, or any other executive earning millions of dollars a year care if their company went bankrupt?

The man walked away with 529 million dollars for seven years. It’s irrelevant to him that Lehman went bankrupt.

You cannot have a good economy, where executives plan for the future, unless they need their companies to continue to do well.

That means high, progressive tax rates on income, on capital gains, AND on unrealized capital and wealth, with no loops.

Taxes on unrealized capital gains and wealth are necessary because, without them, rich types don’t cash out capital; instead, they use loans to pay their bills. When you’re worth 500 million or even just a 100 million, banks are happy to lend, at under 2 percent.

Now, obviously this doesn’t apply to people who have all their securities in one company, but most rich diversify.

The larger point, however, is just that the rich are too rich, and that people who can get rich in a few years don’t care much if everything crashes after they’re rich.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Who Do You Want to Win an Iranian/American War?

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On May 9, 2019

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Yeah, so let’s say it does happen. Who do you want to win?

I’ll lay my cards on the table. I don’t like the Iranian government. Their policies, generally speaking, are abominable to me. I believe in full equality between the sexes, don’t believe in religious states, and so on. Ideologically, these people are my enemies.

But the fact of the matter here is that it’s the US that has far more responsibility for starting a war here. Iran has not attacked the US. There is no legitimate case for war. The US tolerates far worse regimes if they are its allies (Hello Saudi Arabia!), so they aren’t doing it because they care about the Iranian population.

Even if the US did care, well, any war they wage will make the population far worse off, as it did in Iraq and Libya.

The US is by far and away the bad actor here. So, yeah, I hope it loses any war it starts. That’s unlikely, of course, but the next best outcome, that it further overstrains the US, and leads to its continued economic and political weakening, eventually leading to an outright collapse, is not.

The US is the world’s foremost rogue state. Russia doesn’t come close, despite all the squealing. The US attacks other countries all the time, constantly assassinates people, and imposes massive crippling sanctions for bogus reasons, which kill millions.

The US is evil.

So long as it is evil, it needs to either stop being evil, or lose its power.

Sooner rather than later.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Happiness, Love, and Terrorism

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On May 8, 2019

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So, we’re seeing more attacks by motorists. (edited since the Japanese attack turned out to not be an attack. Woops.)

Many years ago, decades ago, I used to wonder why people didn’t use cars and trucks directly in terrorist attacks, not just as vehicles for bombs. Automobiles are one of the only things government can’t take away from people, because our entire society is set up to require them.

John Taylor Gatto, amusingly, used the fact that everyone had cars and almost never deliberately hit anyone as proof that people could, basically, be trusted.

That’s breaking down.

Look, this is simple enough. Our lives suck ass. Despite Abe’s manipulated stats, living in Japan is hellish, even if you are in the system. If you aren’t in the system, it’s beyond hellish.

As for most of the West, most people haven’t had a raise in 40 years, and while inflation stats say, “Hey, that’s okay, because wages have slightly exceeded inflation,” that’s BS, especially in the US, where prices for everything you MUST have, like food, medicine, and housing have increased far faster than wages.

The culture has also moved increasingly to a surveillance culture. This isn’t just about government (cameras everywhere) or private companies who try to track everything we do and are pretty successful; it’s about us–with parents, for example, turning into helicopter parents who basically never let their children have unsupervised time without adults around.

And if you do try, well the cops and children’s services will take your children away from you.

In workplaces more and more electronic devices track what workers do minute by minute and in some cases, like Amazon warehouses, by seconds.

Meanwhile, we have an ideology which says that if you have money you deserve to have it, and if you don’t, you don’t deserve to have it. So not only do you get to be poor, you get to feel bad because you weren’t enough of a psychopath to climb the corporate ladder. (Yes, yes, a few people get rich without engaging in psychopathic behaviour. Maybe you’re one of them. You are an exception.)

Back in the 70s and even 80s, which I remember well, there were no security guards in most buildings. Most governments did not have blast barriers. You could just walk into legislatures. This is not an exaggeration.

We have created a hell world, then we wonder why people eventually freak out and do hellish things.

Why they take what little power they have and kill.

Oh yes, they shouldn’t, blah, blah, blah. Why you are in just as bad a place as they are and you haven’t, so they shouldn’t, because you are the measure of all things.

But human nature resides on bell curves. There are always going to be some people at the ends of the curves. Move the center 10 percent over and you get a lot more than a 10 percent increase in violence.

Who doesn’t commit violence?

Happy people who love the people around them and are looking forward to their future. Those people only commit violence when they or their loved ones are attacked, or if their government tells them to (the last one is rarely to their credit).

It isn’t more complicated than that. If you create a dystopian surveillance society, raise prices on things people need faster than wages will provide for and tell people they are bad people for not being successful when your society makes it harder and harder to be successful and worse and worse for those who fail, some of them are going to flip out.

Eventually, enough may lose patience and stop believing they are the ones who suck, and cause a revolution instead.

I just hope they kill the right people when the time comes. Because don’t think they won’t kill.

A reminder to any members of the elite reading this: Those who have more power have more responsibility. Your subjects are largely what you made them. You will eventually reap as you have sowed.

Indeed you are already, but so far most of this violence hasn’t hit you.

Don’t expect that to continue. More flip-outs are going to target people with power as time goes on.

Bank on it.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The Coming War with Iran?

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On May 7, 2019

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Image by Yuan2003

It may turn out that the worst thing Donald Trump ever did was hire John Bolton as his National Security Advisor.

Trump was already deranged on the subject of Iran, possibly because Jared Kushner is his son-in-law, and Jared is having a (presumably) platonic love affair with Saudi Crown Prince (and de facto ruler) Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud. Saudi Royals both hate and fear Shia Islam, in part because the regions of Saudi Arabia with the oil are Shia.

So Trump unilaterally left the nuclear weapons treaty with Iran, and the Treasury department has made it illegal for any country to buy oil from Iran. Since almost all finance in the world goes through US banks, the Treasury can do this. Only firms which don’t use the SWIFT system can avoid the Treasury’s grasp.

These sanctions are having a terrible effect on Iran, and one which will grow even greater as the final waivers expire. There will be smuggling, but even so, Iran will be starved of foreign currency.

The US has also declared the Iranian military to be a terrorist organization, the first time part of a foreign government has ever received that designation.

And a carrier task group has been sent to the region, specifically as a warning to Iran.

It is well known that the NeoCons, of which Bolton is a prominent member, want a war with Iran, to remake the Middle East. (This is part of the same project which saw Iraq destroyed, and which fuel US-led regime change aspirations in Syria. A little further afield, Libya, while not in the Middle East, was similarly dealt with.)

The issue, as Escobar points out, is that a new alliance is rising. Its key members are China and Russia, but Iran is part of it as well. The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is meant to create routes to Europe and a Chinese-led trade zone. It is meant to bypass the straits of Malacca (which the US can shut down at any time to strangle China), and the land parts will be a lot faster (though not cheaper) than sea transport.

Iran is a key part of this system.

Because other countries aren’t cooperating with the US when it tries to stop the B&R system (indeed, Italy just signed on), the US needs to actually destroy part of it.

Thus Iran.

This isn’t the only reason, needless to say, the NeoCons have wanted to destroy Iran for far longer than the B&R system has existed, but it is now an important consideration.

But what if Iran survives the sanctions? No one except the US is happy about the sanctions. Others may submit, but they don’t like it. The Chinese will do a huge end-run, as with the Russians. Even the Europeans are angry, and have created a “special vehicle” to avoid sanctions. (Consensus seems to be that it doesn’t do a good job and that if they’re serious they need to improve it.)

Because no one is happy, there’s going to be a lot of oil still sold. It may be enough to keep the Iranian government in power.

Then what?

Well, war, maybe.

The problem with that is that Iranians can shut down the Strait of Hormuz. There is no situation, short of nuclear glassing, in which the US can keep it open. That spikes the price of oil to hundreds of dollars a barrel, because, at that point, a quarter of the world’s oil cannot get to the market at all.

And that causes an economic and financial crisis, likely even larger than 2008, because it involves economic fundamentals.

So the question is whether or not Bolton, who is a true believer, can talk Trump into it.

And the answer is… I don’t know. Just don’t know.

But that’s a serious precipice on which we’re walking.

Even without war, this is a serious situation. The US’s continued abuse of its privileged position in the world payments system to sanction countries like Iran and Venezuela, even when other great powers disagree, means that the loss of that privileged position through the creation of alternatives is inevitable. It is already happening and only a matter of time before they become viable enough that major countries will simply be able to ignore the Treasury’s sanctions.

This is also true because other markets are large enough that access to the American market is no longer required. Especially if the EU comes onside with this, the ability to sanction is basically finished if the other great powers (and especially China), don’t agree.

This is, for the US, a late Imperial period. Don’t mistake it as anything else. And remember, very few countries manage to regain their pre-eminence or Empire. Britain lost one Empire and gained another, but it is an exception, and driven by a specific situation (first mover in the Industrial revolution) which has no modern parallel (no, the information revolution is not even a rounding error on the industrial revolution.)

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

One Million Species at Risk of Extinction + One

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On May 6, 2019

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Globe on FireSo, you’ve probably seen all the articles aboutthe UN report which finds that one million species are at risk of extinction, out of the 8.7 million species we believe exist.

That’s more than 10 percent.

The key thing that tends not to get emphasized in this is that ecosystems are chains, or complex webs of interactions. The death of insects, for example (remember when driving caused bug splat? I can’t remember the last time I saw that), will reveberate through the entire web, starting with birds.

These interactions are complicated and we do not understand them well at all.

For example, there is a non-trivial risk that the algae, which are the major oxygen producers in the oceans, will die. They produce 70 to 80 percent of our oxygen.

If that happens, humanity will go extinct, along with a lot more than one million other species.

Our actions are insanity. Absolute insanity. We are destroying the web of life which makes our own existence possible.

We have no escape. We cannot even make biospheres (enclosed environments) work. Without that, we cannot begin to try to keep even a small population alive during the collapse (not that that would be anything but a catastrophe anyway).

But the fact that we can’t make even a simple enclosed environment which can support human life work is the point. We are playing with systems we don’t understand. We are committing mass genocide of other life forms.

And there is a better than even chance that it will be a million, or millions, +1. We do not exist separate from the web of beings who make life on Earth possible.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 5, 2019

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On May 5, 2019

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This post is by TONY WIKRENT

Strategic Political Economy

China’s population could peak in 2023, here’s why that matters

[CNBC, via Naked Capitalism 5-2-19]

China’s population is likely to peak in 2023, according to a study by online database company Global Demographics and analytics firm Complete Intelligence. The Chinese government had previously estimated that the country would hit its maximum population size in 2029…. The decline in births is driven by a “maternity cliff,” according to the report. The number of women of childbearing age in China — defined as aged 15 to 49 by the publishers — is set to fall from 346 million in 2018 to 318 million in 2023.

With fewer women of childbearing age and fewer births per 1,000 women, the total number of newborns will drop as well. The study predicts that 13.3 million babies will be born in 2023, down from 15.2 million last year.

The New Silk Roads reach the next level 

Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism 4-30-19]

….the West, as usual, ignored what was the absolutely key takeaway of the BRI forum: the deepening, on all fronts, of the Russia-China strategic partnership. It’s all here, in President Putin’s speech.

Putin emphasized “harmonious and sustainable economic development and economic growth throughout the Eurasian space.” He noted how BRI “rhymes with Russia’s idea to establish a Greater Eurasian Partnership, a project designed to ‘integrate integration frameworks’, and therefore to promote a closer alignment of various bilateral and multilateral integration processes that are currently underway in Eurasia.”

Putin could not have been more specific. “The Eurasian Union…has already signed a free-trade agreement with Vietnam and a provisional agreement with Iran, paving the way to the creation of a free-trade area. The preparation of similar instruments with Singapore and Serbia is nearing completion, and talks are underway with Israel, Egypt and India. We cooperate actively with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.”

Addressing the forum, Putin added another enticing dimension, with the China-driven Maritime Silk Road possibly joining the Russia-driven Northern Sea Route, “a global and competitive route connecting northeastern, eastern and southeastern Asia with Europe” will emerge.

Disrupting mainstream economics

Economists Are Learning to Love the Minimum Wage
[City Lab, via The Big Picture 4-29-19]

….two new papers provide powerful evidence that higher minimum wages in fact boost the conditions of workers—especially the least skilled and lowest paid among them—without doing broad economic harm.

The first paper is forthcoming in the prestigious Quarterly Journal of Economics and is currently available as a NBER working paper. (There is also a shorter, more reader-friendly research brief available.) It tracks the economic effects of more than 100 minimum-wage hikes across the country between 1979 and 2016.

Want to decrease suicide? Raise the minimum wage, researchers suggest

[CBS News, via Naked Capitalism 5-1-19]

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