by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
These journalists exposed the corruption that led to Puerto Rico’s mass protests
[CNN, via Naked Capitalism 7-24-19]
The World’s Biggest Lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, will force US government to stop climate change
Lambert Strether, July 25, 2019 [Naked Capitalism]
Juliana v. United States is a big and complicated case that has now advanced through two administrations. The original complaint was filed in September 2015; Judge Ann Aiken of Oregon district court rejected the government’s motion to dismiss the case in November 2016…. The American Bar Association, in “Can Our Children Trust Us with Their Future?,” describes the scale of the case and the stakes:
The 2016 ruling in Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana v. USA is one of the greatest recent events in our system of law. (See Opinion and Order, Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-TC, US District Court for Oregon, Eugene Division. Anne Aiken, Judge, filed 11/10/16.) A group of children between the ages of eight and nineteen filed suit against the federal government, asking the court to order the government to act on climate change, asserting harm from carbon emissions. The federal government’s motion to dismiss was denied. Although I am not involved in the case, I am a lifelong environmentalist, and I teach environmental law (to non-law students). This case is a shining example of what law can be. This case gives me hope that we will not continue to cooperate in our own destruction, and future generations will be able to rely on us to uphold the spirit of the law and purpose behind government….
So Juliana v. United States is a lawsuit that’s being sponsored and facilitated by Our Children’s Trust, which is a nonprofit organization in Eugene, Oregon, that’s been working on atmospheric climate litigation to try to deal with the climate crisis for a while. So our lawsuit was filed in August of 2015, with 21 plaintiffs from all over the country that each have their own complaint, as part of a large declaration that gives a standing to sue the U.S. Federal Government. And basically, we’re asserting that the U.S. Federal Government has known since 1960 that climate change could be potentially disastrous. We have proof from administrations going back all the way to the Johnson administration, saying that they knew climate change could be an issue and they knew that fossil fuel infrastructure was causing it. And the U.S Federal Government still chose to take direct action to continue to perpetuate the fossil fuel industry and the U.S. fossil fuel economy that we have.
And we’re asserting that by taking that direct action, they’ve disproportionately put the rights of young people at risk, and the rights of life liberty and property as promised to us in the Constitution….
….
From The New Yorker, in “The Right to a Stable Climate Is the Constitutional Question of the Twenty-first Century“:
Judge Aiken had found that the plaintiffs had standing to sue because they had demonstrated three things: that they had suffered particular, concrete injuries; that the cause of their injuries was “fairly traceable” to the government’s actions; and that the courts had the ability, at least partially, to remedy these injuries. On the first two parts of standing, the government’s case is weakening by the minute, owing especially to the growing body of attribution science—studies published in peer-reviewed journals that directly link extreme weather events, such as huge hurricanes and raging wildfires, to climate change. “Evidence to meet the standing burden has gotten much stronger,” Ann Carlson, an environmental-law professor at U.C.L.A., told me….
….
Here is a lawyerly disquistion on the public trust doctrine from the American Bar Association, “Climate Change Litigation: A Way Forward“, with citations and everything….
CBS reporter Steve Croft, in “The climate change lawsuit that could stop the U.S. government from supporting fossil fuels,” interviews Julia Olson, an Oregon lawyer, and the executive director of the NGO, Our Children’s Trust, which initiated Juliana:
“[Olson] began constructing the case eight years ago out of this spartan space now dominated by this paper diorama that winds its way through the office.”
OLSON : So this is a timeline that we put together… [D]uring President Johnson’s administration, they issued a report in 1965 that talked about climate change being a catastrophic threat. Every president knew that burning fossil fuels was causing climate change.
Fifty years of evidence has been amassed by Olson and her team, 36,000 pages in all, to be used in court.
OLSON: Our government, at the highest levels, knew and was briefed on it regularly by the national security community, by the scientific community. They have known for a very long time that it was a big threat.
KROFT: Has the government disputed that government officials have known about this for more than 50 years and been told and warned about it for 50 years?
OLSON: No. They admit that the government has known for over 50 years that burning fossil fuels would cause climate change. And they don’t dispute that we are in a danger zone on climate change. And they don’t dispute that climate change is a national security threat and a threat to our economy and a threat to people’s lives and safety. They do not dispute any of those facts of the case.Steve Kroft: So you’ve got them with their own words.
OLSON: We have them with their own words. It’s really the clearest, most compelling evidence I’ve ever had in any case I’ve litigated in over 20 years.
30,000 pages. It looks like there’s a reason Juliana has survived as long as it has.
“The rating agency bought a majority share in Four Twenty Seven, a California-based company that measures a range of hazards, including extreme rainfall, hurricanes, heat stress and sea level rise, and tracks their impact on 2,000 companies and 196 countries. In the United States, the data covers 761 cities and more than 3,000 counties.”
State and Local Taxes Are Worsening Inequality
[New York Times, via The Big Picture 7-25-19]
Taxation in the United States remains progressive because the federal income tax remains the largest source of government revenue. But the distribution of the total burden has become much less progressive. In 1961, Americans with the highest incomes paid an average of 51.5 percent of that income in federal, state and local taxes. Half a century later, in 2011, Americans with the highest incomes paid just 33.2 percent of their income in taxes, according to a study by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman published last year. Over that same period, the bottom 90 percent of Americans, ranked by income, saw their tax burden increase from 22.3 percent of income to 26 percent of income.
Restoring balance to the economy
Verdict Is In: Food Stamps Put Poor Kids on Path to Success
[Bllomberg, via The Big Picture 7-25-19]
Long-term evidence starting in the 1960s now shows that government support in childhood reduces the need for welfare in adulthood.
“Medicaid and Mortality: New Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data”
“Our analysis provides new evidence that Medicaid coverage reduces mortality rates among low-income adults. Our estimates suggest that approximately 15,600 deaths would have been averted had the ACA expansions been adopted nationwide as originally intended by the ACA. This highlights an ongoing cost to non-adoption that should be relevant to both state policymakers and their constituents.” • Vox: “This is in line with a growing body of research that shows Medicaid expansion has not only vastly increased access to health insurance, but also improved health outcomes. About 13.6 million adults gained Medicaid coverage under Obamacare.”
“The Black Socialists of America (BSA), a coalition of ‘anticapitalist, internationalist Black Americans,’ just launched its Dual Power Map. The map promises to plot every single worker cooperative, small business development center, community land trust, and dual power project in America so ‘you can support them right now.’ But what are any of these things? What is dual power? Why should you care? At its heart, dual power is a socialist strategy concerned with helping people who are unable to have their needs met by capitalism. The strategy calls for ‘counter-institutions’ that not only meet the needs of those left behind but are run by those very people. It also calls for people to protect and develop these institutions into forms of social, economic, and political ‘counter-power’ through social movements or organizing efforts.”
[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 7-23-19]
“‘By the way, when we started [#FightFor15], it should have been $15. Now I think it should be $20. Make sure America Rising hears that. It should be $20 an hour — $18 to $20 an hour at this point,’ Tlaib said.”
[Arindrajit Dube, via Naked Capitalism 7-25-19]
“About 37% of U.S. households are “free and clear,” meaning they no longer have a home mortgage to pay, according to a Zillow data analysis. This number ticked upward after the Great Recession and over the past 10 years the share of homeowners paying off their mortgages has risen 5.5 percentage points… Mortgage characteristics vary by state and those with lower housing prices typically have higher rates of fully-paid mortgages. In 2017, the most recent available data, West Virginia had the highest share of “free and clear” ownership at 54%. Maryland and the District of Columbia were on the other end of the spectrum with rates of 27% and 24%, respectively.”
Economics in the real world
Morgan Stanley: Why Tanker Wars Aren’t Causing An Oil Price Spike
[OilPrice, via Naked Capitalism 7-23-19]U.S. Shale Is Doomed No Matter What They Do
Predatory Finance
Who’s ready for decades of low or negative U.S. interest rates?
[Economic Policy Institute, via Naked Capitalism 7-21-19]
How does private equity function in the real world? While leverage and direct control by equity investors can impose discipline on bloated companies, much of what private equity firms do is simply destructive—absent the “creative” part. Private equity firms often engage in what economists call “rent-seeking,” or unproductive behavior designed to take advantage of loopholes in the tax code, banking and securities laws, and bankruptcy provisions, rather than creating value through efficiency gains.
Private equity firms have rigged the system so that they share in the upside risk but minimize losses from bad bets—a “heads we win, tails you lose” strategy enabled by a tax system that encourages equity investors to load companies up with debt. If a portfolio company thrives despite being saddled with debt, it can be resold at a profit. If not, private equity partners recoup some or all of their minimal investment by selling assets and siphoning off cash through fees and debt-funded dividends.
Elizabeth Warren Says Another Economic Crash Is Coming: Is She Right?
Pam Martens and Russ Martens, July 24, 2019 [Wall Street on Parade]
[The Reformed Broker, via Naked Capitalism 7-22-19]
Even if you disagree with her violently negative view of finance, you have to admit that she understands and articulates how it works, and how it fails, better than anyone else who has ever run for President.
In a world where Warren becomes the Democratic nominee for President, you would see the entirety of the financial services lobby work furiously to reelect President Trump (and, by extension, Mick Mulvaney), who have done more to deregulate the sector in two and a half years than any President (and advisor) in modern history, including Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin in the mid 90’s.
It is not surprising, then, that centrist or moderate Democrats who work in finance are throwing their support behind Kamala Harris (see here and here) and / or praying for a Joe Biden surge – which would give them comfort in the continuance of the status quo while not having to associate themselves with all the xenophobia, nationalism or outright racism of the Trump 2020 effort.
Elizabeth Warren [Medium, via Naked Capitalism 7-23-19]The IMF Takeover of Pakistan
[Tweet below, via Naked Capitalism 7-22-19]
Climate and environmental crises
The study—published Tuesday in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology—argues that Candida auris “may be the first example of a new fungal disease emerging from climate change.”
“The argument that we are making based on comparison to other close relative fungi is that as the climate has gotten warmer, some of these organisms, including Candida auris, have adapted to the higher temperature, and as they adapt, they break through human’s protective temperatures,” lead author Arturo Casadevall, chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a statement.
Fungal diseases are relatively uncommon in humans because of body temperature—but if they adapt to rising temperatures, and aren’t easily treatable with medications, they could increasingly endanger human health on a global scale.
“When Gavin Pretor-Pinney decided on a whim to inaugurate the Cloud Appreciation Society at a literary festival, he never expected it to draw much attention. Fifteen years later, more than 47,000 members have signed up for a group that could have been dismissed as another example of quintessentially British eccentricity…. Global climate models are a computational mesh that use grids of the Earth that are tens to hundreds of kilometers wide. Clouds and the complicated processes they are made under are smaller in size and present a ‘blind spot’ in climate modeling, says [Tapo] Schneider, the Caltech climate scientist….
Climate scientists drive stake through heart of skeptics’ argument
[NBC, via Naked Capitalism 7-25-19]Climate crisis blamed as temperature records broken in three nations
[Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 7-25-19]Under Trump, 26% of Climate Change References Have Vanished From .Gov Sites
For example: “Worldwide demand for air conditioning is only going to increase, according to investors and those in the industry. ‘The hotter it gets, the more your business increases,’ John Staples, president and CEO of US Air Conditioning, told the Verge back in 2013. And he was right — by 2050, two-thirds of the world’s households are predicted to own an air conditioner. But it’s a bit of a catch-22: As the planet warms, access to A/C can save lives, but the more we use it, the more the world heats up. And though people are certainly making money off this boon in the HVAC market, they aren’t investing in developing new, greener methods of cooling.”
“How Airplane Contrails Are Helping Make the Planet Warmer”
[Yale Environment 360, via Naked Capitalism 7-23-19]
“[T]he condensation trails produced by the exhaust from aircraft engines are creating an often-invisible thermal blanket of cloud across the planet. Though lasting for only a short time, these ‘contrails’ have a daily impact on atmospheric temperatures that is greater than that from the accumulated carbon emissions from all aircraft since the Wright Brothers first took to the skies more than a century ago. More alarming still, researchers warned late last month that efforts by engineers to cut aircraft CO2 emissions by making their engines more fuel-efficient will create more, whiter, and longer-lasting contrails — notably in the tropics, where the biggest increases in flights are expected. In a paper being widely praised by other experts in the field, Lisa Bock and Ulrike Burkhardt of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, forecast a near-tripling in the ‘radiative forcing’ from contrails by 2050….. Research in the American South and Midwest has concluded that when contrails are around, they raise night-time temperatures sufficiently to reduce the day-night differences by 3 degrees C.”
How the Plastics Industry Is Fighting to Keep Polluting the World
[Sharon Lerner, The Intercept 7-27-19]
With plastic particles found everywhere from the air above the Pyrenees to the deepest ocean trenches, the magnitude of the crisis has ushered in a new era of public outrage. Sharon Lerner investigated the plastics industry’s increasingly desperate fight to keep profiting from a product that is polluting the world. The promotion of recycling has proven particularly useful to the industry in shifting responsibility for the waste to consumers, but much of what is “recycled” ends up in landfills or incinerators, and we’re well past the point where anything short of limiting production will alleviate the problem.
Ohio nuclear bailout “another significant setback”
[Reuters (7/23), Greentech Media (7/23), via American Wind Energy Association 7-24-19]
The Ohio House approved a bailout for nuclear on Tuesday that would eliminate the state’s mandate for building out renewables. The bill is “another significant setback for Ohio’s clean energy market,” says the American Wind Energy Association.
Information Age Dystopia
“How Amazon uses 18-wheelers to transfer heavy data loads to the cloud”
“Moving petabytes of data to a cloud like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure just by sending it out over the internet can take years. Some companies would rather not wait that long. So the cloud providers have come up with special-purpose hardware that can be filled up with data and then mailed to the cloud vendors for much faster migration. Using this equipment can save money, too, because moving data over a network in the usual way can get expensive. One business with big data, DigitalGlobe — a subsidiary of Maxar Technologies, came up with a more radical idea. It had AWS send over a truck over for faster delivery. AWS wound up announcing its Snowmobile 18-wheel truck for this exact purpose in 2016. None of AWS’ cloud competitors have followed suit — yet.”
Lambert Strether: “The cloud turns out to have a pretty heavy footprint.”
“Breaking Up Amazon Doesn’t Go Far Enough—We Must Put It Under Public Control”
“What should be done with Amazon? While some parts of the company should indeed be broken up, its sprawling scale is not its only problem. Much of what Amazon does is harmful for reasons inherent to the logic of private ownership, and would remain so at any scale. … By becoming the market, Amazon has effectively become the market’s regulator. Such powers should belong to the public. Democratic public ownership of the marketplace platform could retool this infrastructure for public good. The People’s Amazon—call it Ourmazon—could guarantee access to the marketplace for smaller producers rather than driving down the cost of their goods and services. As a public distribution network, Ourmazon could stabilize prices at a point that ensures viability and competitiveness for small businesses at a cost that benefits consumers.”
[ShackNews, via Naked Capitalism 7-25-19]“Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours”
“Some models of Airbus A350 airliners still need to be hard rebooted after exactly 149 hours, despite warnings from the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) first issued two years ago.” • Funny to have the famous Help Desk reponse — “Please reboot your machine and try again” — appear at such a high level. To be fair to Airbus, the problem was fixable. The article has interesting information on how Airbus aircraft are wired up.
Creating new economic potential – science and technology
[Cleantechnica.com 7-23-19]
Top 10 turbine makers to spend $2.6B on R&D in near term
[Windpower Monthly (UK), via American Wind Energy Association 7-24-19]
The top 10 turbine manufacturers worldwide will likely spend about $2.6 billion on research and development over the next four years, according to Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. The spending will likely bring the levelized cost of electricity down and help the companies maintain sales margins, the report says.
A record 24 GW of wind under construction in US in H1
[Windpower Monthly (UK), via American Wind Energy Association 7-22-19]
The US has a record-breaking 24 gigawatts of new wind capacity under construction in the first half of 2019, compared to nearly 19 GW in the year-before period, according to Windpower Intelligence and American Wind Energy Association data. Eight major wind farms came online in the first half of this year.
Larger turbines bring benefits, challenges
[The Conversation (Australia), via American Wind Energy Association 7-22-19]
Larger turbines that are more productive and efficient are becoming the norm, but are also resulting in engineering challenges such as increased vibration and stress on gearboxes and transmission infrastructure, writes the University of New South Wales’ Con Doolan. “[W]ind turbines are one of the most cost-effective and technologically sophisticated forms of renewable energy, and as the developed world comes to grips with climate change we will only see more of them,” he writes.
NextEra: US could reach 50% renewables by 2030
[CleanTechnica, via American Wind Energy Association 7-22-19]
NextEra Energy offered an updated projection for renewables growth in the US during its June meeting, suggesting that the nation could source 50% of its total electricity from renewables by 2030. The forecast and NextEra’s investments in wind and solar should make investors feel good about the profitability of backing decarbonization, Steve Hanley writes.
3D-Printed Robot Powered by Vibrations
[Machine Design Today 7-22-19]
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a robot that is 3D printed and powered by vibrations in the surrounding environment. It measures approximately two millimeters in length, 1.8 millimeters wide and 0.8 millimeters thick, and weigh about five milligrams. The prototype robots respond to different vibration frequencies depending on their configurations, letting researchers control individual bots by using different frequency vibrations. When moving, the microbots can cover four millimeters per second.
Laser-Guided Microbots Track Down and Kill Tumors
[Machine Design Today 7-27-19]
The microrobots are microscopic spheres of magnesium metal almost completely coated with thin layers of gold and parylene, a polymer that resists digestion and prevents the patient’s body from destroying the microbots. The layers of gold leave a circular portion of the sphere uncovered. So, after the microbots are taken orally and are in the stomach, the magnesium inside react with the fluids in the digestive tract, generating small bubbles. The stream of bubbles acts like a jet and propels the sphere forward until it collides with nearby tissue….
The infrared laser diffuses through tissues and is absorbed by oxygen-carrying hemoglobin molecules in red blood cells, making the molecules vibrate ultrasonically. Those ultrasonic vibrations are picked up by sensors pressed against the skin. Data from those sensors is used to create images of the internal structures of the body….
Once the microrobots arrive near the tumor, a high-power, continuous-wave, near-infrared laser beam activates them. The microrobots absorb the infrared light so strongly, they briefly heat up, melting the wax capsule surrounding them and exposing the magnesium to digestive fluids. At that point, the microrobots’ bubble jets activate, and they begin swarming. The jets are not steerable, so the technique is sort of a shotgun approach. Not all the microrobots will hit the target, but many will. When they do, they stick to the surface and begin releasing their payloads of medication.
[Machine Design Today 7-24-19]
As once-aspirational technologies become tangible, the commercial car market looks set to provide more choices in transportation.
Disrupting mainstream economics
Jared Bernstein, July 19, 2019 [Vox, via The Big Picture 7-23-19]
1) Going below the natural rate of unemployment could spark an inflationary spiral
2) Everybody wins with globalization
3) Deep budget deficits will crowd out private investment
4) A higher minimum wage will only hurt workers
“Warren made the wealth tax the centerpiece of her campaign. It’s part of a fusillade of proposals that are more aggressive, far-reaching—and expensive—than any previous Democratic front-runner would have dared venture: break up big tech companies like Google and Facebook; abolish private health insurance and give everyone Medicare; start a $2 trillion industrial policy built on “economic patriotism” to boost exports; crack down on private equity’s “Wall Street looting”; overhaul corporate governance by putting workers on boards; eliminate the filibuster; cancel student loan debt; and establish free public college and universal child care. Together, Warren’s platform amounts to a giant leap in Democratic ambition—some would say radicalism—that dwarfs the steady but safe achievements of the Clinton and Obama eras.”
Disrupting mainstream politics
How the Democratic Netroots Died
[Politico 7-17-19]
Twelve years ago, progressive political bloggers were so influential that nearly every 2008 Democratic presidential candidate attended the Yearly Kos convention—a gathering of liberal online activists named after Markos Moulitsas’ popular Daily Kos website.
This year, that same event, now called Netroots Nation, attracted a measly four of the 24 Democratic candidates….
But the 2008 presidential primary put an end to the netroots’ unity. In his 2009 book Bloggers on the Bus, Eric Boehlert captured how the election drove wedges through the once-harmonious band of online activists. As Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton slugged it out, some bloggers took sides and others felt caught in the crossfire.
In March 2008, a group of Daily Kos diarists who backed Clinton staged a virtual walkout in protest of the site’s tilt toward Obama. Moulitsas shot back that Clinton’s refusal to drop out showed she was “eager to split the party apart in her mad pursuit of power.” His Crashing the Gate co-author, Armstrong, saw the race differently; in his view, Clinton “showed signs of being accountable to the netroots movement” while Obama “didn’t need the netroots” and “was basically an identity-politics cult” leader. Armstrong later quit blogging and worked for Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson in 2012.
“Democratic donors and elites are generally far too focused on federal elections, a particularly egregious oversight given the sizable governing power found at the state and local level. … Billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer jumping into the presidential race is but the latest illustration of the left donor class’s inability to stay focused and act strategically… Right now, according to the ACS’s Fredrickson, the left likes to fund ‘projects,’ and not ‘general operating support.’ Wealthy donors on the right will ‘give their grantees really long lead time[s] to find success,’ she said. On the left, however, ‘if you don’t produce in three months and show your metrics on this pet project … [they] cut you off. It’s an incredible contrast.’”
“Is it really the case that Democrats and prominent liberals care most about identity and representation? They certainly talk a good game…. The truth is, as has been documented at length, Democrats and the liberal establishment that supports them don’t really care about representation or issues related to identity, unless they can be used as a cudgel against those whom they politically disagree with, or can win them votes. After an entire year of claiming these matters were central to Democratic politics, the party went about making sure that diverse, progressive candidates were kept out of power in favor of less diverse, centrist, and often wealthy individuals, from needlessly killing Keith Ellison’s bid for DNC chair to passing over Elizabeth Warren as Hillary Clinton’s running mate in favor of a white man who was bad on abortion rights. Just like much of the Left, the Democrats believe someone’s identity is less important than the politics they espouse; it just so happens the politics they favor are ones with worse outcomes for marginalized communities.”
The Dark Side
Republicans Are Transforming Federal Courts for the Next Generation
[Real News Network 7-22-19]
What we face now could affect the nature of our society for generations to come and no one more aptly describes what we face as our guest who wrote the cover article for the July 19th Edition of The Nation magazine entitled “Donald Trump and the Plot to Take Over Our Courts.” Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law, contributing writer for The Nation, Legal Editor of WNYC’s “More Perfect,”….
ELIE MYSTAL But what people have to understand is that the Merrick Garland nomination, that was just the capstone on McConnell’s career of blocking Obama nominees. He blocked Obama nominees throughout the judicial system as the majority leader. He blocked Obama nominees throughout judicial system as the minority leader. Okay. So by the time Donald Trump took office, there were 106 vacancies in our federal judiciary system waiting for Trump to fill them….
….the Federalist Society is a nonprofit legal group that supports libertarian values and an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. Without getting into the legal weeds, what you really need to know is that the Federalist Society supports arch conservative Justices, and they’ve been doing this for generations. This is where the Democrats have dropped the ball. The Federalists have been going into law schools, identifying conservative-leaning students, incubating them, training them, promoting them, telling them which judge to clerk for, telling them which jobs to take. So that by the time they are all grown up, when they have an opportunity to put judges on the courts, they know exactly who they’re going to.
So when Donald Trump gets 106 nominations, the Federalist Society has 200 judges at the ready to fill those seats. If the next Democratic president got a hundred nominees, we wouldn’t know how to fill them. We’ve got like 25, 30 people who are ready to go right now. And that’s because the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, the Koch brothers—These people have been planning this for so long, that they were particularly ready to take advantage of what Trump has given them.
A.V. Flox
@avflox
Do good recklessly.
Bill H
Re: Elizabeth Warren and, “Even if you disagree with her violently negative view of finance, you have to admit that she understands and articulates how it works…”
I don’t have to admit anything of the sort. Economics, finance, and business are three entirely different fields of study and discipline, and Warren is an economist. Studying and working in the field of economics does not mean that one has studied or has any knowledge of or wisdom in the fields of either finance or business.
She has, in fact, demonstrated with her theories that she has little to no knowledge in both fields, especially in her bill submitted to Congress called the “Responsible Capitalism Act,” which is a piece of unadulterated nonsense.
StewartM
Bill H.
“Unadulterated nonsense”.
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/15/17683022/elizabeth-warren-accountable-capitalism-corporations
Warren wants to eliminate the huge financial incentives that entice CEOs to flush cash out to shareholders rather than reinvest in businesses. She wants to curb corporations’ political activities. And for the biggest corporations, she’s proposing a dramatic step that would ensure workers and not just shareholders get a voice on big strategic decision
Some good ideas there. What’s your problem with what capitalism really is, which can be summed up as “nothing else than the short-term profits of shareholders being important?” Warren wants to return to the other obligations.
StewartM
On plastics, while that article is largely true about the plastic industry’s propaganda campaign, the problem really is that we left polymer recycling up to the capitalists, and once they couldn’t make 15 or 25 % profit off of it they ditched it. That makes about as much sense as turning sewage treatment over to the capitalists, and once they can’t make oodles of cash off of it there would be no choice left but to dump raw sewage into waterways. Like wastewater treatment, ALL recycling should have been done by the government from the get-go, not just plastics, so that come what may this would have been done. The government could then sell it to business to recoup at least some of the costs while also making it sure it stayed cheaper than those business using virgin plastic.
The biggest problem with plastics recycling is that the setup was never done right; all recycled plastic is a mishmash and contaminated with everything else, and business has to spend a lot of effort cleaning it up. As usual, the capitalists cheaped out on everything so you get a crappy product, because actually doing it right would reduce the next quarterly profit report for the stockholders.
Also–if we really wanted to cut down a lot of plastics pollution we’d be helping developing countries set up their own water treatment facilities–tap water isn’t drinkable in much of the world–instead of letting the bottled water industry have its own way. Safe, potable, tap water is cheaper and also would cut down on all those water bottles going into trash streams.
Microplastics, the big problem, doesn’t originate from bottles or wraps or clamshells but clothing–from fibers being shed from garments during the wash process. That’s not a trivial problem to solve.
Oh, and people forget that if you start substituting other materials for polymers–because the substitutes are heavier–the transportation costs (and hence, fuel used and greenhouse gases) go up, so that has downsides too.
nihil obstet
Thanks for finding the Firefox extension that returns Twitter to the old format. It’s working for me.
nihil obstet
We must do something about the federal judiciary if we’re going to have a democracy in the U.S. As happy as I am with Juliana v. United States it represents a problem that liberals have had since the 60s — a dependence on the Supreme Court to make progressive change. The Warren Court was an anomaly. The courts are overwhelmingly on the side of the powerful. Plessy v. Ferguson was the usual. Brown v. Board of Education was the outlier.
Now with the raft of right wing operatives from the Federalist Society being confirmed by the slateful in Congress (Schumer is so co-operative), the placement of all rights in property seems inevitable. It starts with cases like Epic Systems v. Lewis, and may extend to a review of whether the commerce clause gives the federal government any regulatory powers, other than the power to strike down state regulations as unfair commerce.
We need a new constitution. The 18th c. document for a rural sparsely populated country needs more good will to work than we have in politics. However, in the meantime we should keep the Courts from setting up to strike down any law that bothers a billionaire. I’d start by ending lifetime appointments. Maybe ten years, at the end of which the judge could not be immediately reappointed to the same court?
Hugh
I agree with nihil obstet. The genius and resiliency of the US Constitution are part of our mythological history. The reality is that the Constitution was written by the haves to divvy up power and property among themselves and keep it out of the hands of ordinary people. In a addition to the anti-democratic Senate and Electoral College, nowadays post Citizens United, the rich can buy elections and entrench their power with voter suppression, gerrymandering and stacking the courts.
BTW Warren was a professor of law at UPenn and Harvard, specializing in both bankruptcy and commercial law. So both finance and business. She began her career in the law and economics movement. So there’s the economics background there too. I would say that her real weakness is in her neoclassical economic training, much of which she still retains. And that like most economists, her knowledge of what money is and what it does are virtually non-existent (something most of the public don’t understand about economists and economics).
Hugh
I have no use for minimum wages. I support a living wage. I have for some years pegged, in most areas, a beginning living wage at $20/hour. A 40 hour week and 50 week working year translate this to a gross income of $40,000/year. This was essentially my target. The idea is to have not just a basic income which covers the necessities but some discretionary income for quality of life. To note, the BLS defines full time work beginning at 35 hours. This would yield a gross annual income of $35,000.
Clinton’s $12/hour under these conditions would have resulted in a gross income of $24,000 with a 40 hour work week. At 35 hours, this would reduce to $21,000.
Tlaib also mentioned $18/hour. For a 40 hour week 50 week year, this would equate to $36,000. For a 35 hour week it would be $31,500.
Lots of numbers but it is really the annual income which is the most informative, and more specifically the after tax income which we haven’t even gotten to. It’s really what after tax income would provide a decent life or a start for one and work back from that.
Eric Anderson
StewartM:
Plastic brick production seems to ramping up in a few different countries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax0laKY5WSI
There may still be hope for an effective market solution so long as there is a strong market. The problem is the market has never been strong b/c the range of plastics that can be successfully turned back into raw material to make new products is extremely narrow.
This doesn’t seem to be the case with the bricks and building materials.
Willy
What are Bill H’s ideas for saving capitalism?
StewartM
I also agree with nihil obstet and Hugh. The current bruhaha about Trump underscores the point. A sound system should be able to handle bad people being elected, instead of ‘norms’ of dubious worth.
The interpretation that a sitting prez can’t be indicted is fatuous–why?–don’t we have a vice president ready and able to take over at a moment’s notice? One could perhaps argue that civil suits and allegations of criminal conduct unrelated to a president’s conduct during office or ascent to office could be deferred until after leaving office, but I can’t see why allegations related to those two things (ascent to office; conduct while in office) should be deferred. Those, plus defying a court order, should result in immediate arrest, indictment, and trial with the president being removed until the trial is concluded (he/she could return if found not guilty). If you want to really mean it when you say “the president is not above the law” then by god he/she should have the face the same music that the commoners face.
Openly breaking the law should not require a political solution like impeachment. There is a place for impeachment, to be sure, and it could be based on mere policy differences; no allegations of lawbreaking should be needed. If a president so egregiously pushes policies which goes against popular opinion (which *hopefully* is represented in Congress) then impeachment should be an option. Ditto with removing SCOTUS judges. It’s not an easy thing to pull off, but maybe it could serve as a deterrence against some bad behaviors.