The daily news regularly features commentary about the outrageous and growing income inequality in the USA. The data support the outrage:
In late summer of 2001 I moved from the USA to Canada, where my rose-colored glasses paradoxically made the grass look even greener. While President Bush had just reneged on the Kyoto Protocol, Prime Minister Chrétien stood by it, having been one of the first to sign. Two years later Chrétien withstood the pressure to join Bush’s disastrous war against Iraq.
An important recent article on resource use and its environmental impacts starts from the premise that “the planet’s resources and ecosystems are a commons, and… all people are entitled to an equal, sustainable share.” Alas, the world today deviates wildly from this norm. Indeed, inequality—of resource use, but also of income and wealth—is extremely high today and is actually worsened by economic growth. What’s more, it is bad for our politics,
“Society won’t settle for worthy statements followed by futile gestures. It won’t settle for countries announcing plans in Paris five years ago for 2.8 degrees warming, far too high, that they don’t even meet. Society won’t settle for companies that preach green but don’t manage their carbon footprints, or financial institutions who can’t tell us whether our money is on the right or wrong side of climate history.”
These are not the words of an environmental activist,
By James Magnus-Johnston
Going forward in these uncertain times, a universal basic income could be the best way to maintain social solidarity—whether referring to health, wellbeing, or public order. “Solidarity,” writes Eric Klinenberg, “motivates us to promote public health, not just our own personal security. It keeps us from hoarding medicine” and prompts us “to knock on our older neighbor’s door.” It is a structure and a mindset that breaks down the barriers of inequality and improves trust,
We are going to need more than a wealth tax to fix our economy.
When viewed through the lens of ecological economics and energy resources, the situation in Ukraine comes into sharp focus.
While we’re hunkered down enduring the inevitable collapse of the growth economy, we should consider sound policies for a sustainable economy.
Rick Heller explains how to substitute mindfulness for greed in the transition to a new economy.
Egypt and Tunisia have a lesson: GDP is a measure of the commotion of money in an economy, not a measure of delivered well-being.