Op-Ed. US Trade War with China: Desperate Move to Save Western Empire

by Andre Vltchek, International Daily News in China.  November 26th, 2018

Most of those who have had a chance to witness Chinese internationalist mega-projects, clearly understand that the West is near to collapsing; it will never be able to compete with tremendous enthusiasm and progressive spirit of the most populous country on earth, which on top of it, is built on socialist principles (with Chinese characteristics).

Comments invited here, with copies to both eric.britton@ecoplan.org and  robert.ayres@insead.edu please.

The Universal Basic Income: It’s time

 In the beginning

The most widely read book on economics in history (with the possible exception of “Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith) was a book by a self-taught political economist named Henry George. His formal education ended at age 14. He made his living as a journalist and later became a politician. Yet, his magnum opus, entitled “Progress and Poverty” was taken very seriously by economists, and justifiably so.  The book sold 3 million copies in English, in the first years after publication, 6 million copies in thirteen languages, by 1936, and many more since then. It is justifiably included as one of the ten all-time economics classics {George, 1879 [1946] #2004}. See Figure  1.

In 1879 Henry George advocated a single tax on land values. At the time he wrote, land values were a reasonable proxy for total societal wealth. Today that is less true, and I will focus on the alternatives later. Very briefly, it argued that people should own the products of their work, but that the gifts of nature, including the fertility of the land and the mineral wealth beneath, should be shared equally among all the inhabitants of the earth or the territory.

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Op-Ed: True Democracy is actually ‘The’ Delivery System of Human Rights

Democracy was born at the local level, and that is where we can win it back. (Barcelone en Comú)

Human rights violations are not an unfortunate stain on an otherwise clean democracy. It is terribly normal

Human rights: Food for a thought to be delivered – Human Rights Reader 455

1. Democracy does not mean that the majority is right, but instead it means that it gives the majority the right to govern. (Umberto Eco) This is why elections are eventually important episodes. But democracy additionally requires that, in the exercise of its mandate, the government can be controlled (i):

The power of the state cannot be at the whim of the governors even if duly elected. (Arturo Illia) Why? Because in our fiduciary democracies elections are equivalent to the selling and buying that goes on in supermarkets in which candidates offer all kinds of products to their clients in exchange for them buying their promises and showing up at poling day.(ii) (Rafael Gumucio) This is also why, furthermore, we ought to fear as much those from outside who want to ‘buy us’, as fear those from inside who want to ‘sell us’. (A. Illia )

A World-Wide Birdwatchers Guide To Dangerous Political Predators

A mid year reflection on dangerous world-wide political predators on the prowl and a real menace to democracy, equity and the planet.

Africa Streets and MOBILIZE, Dar es Salaam, 26-28 June 2018

                        See https://worldstreets.wordpress.com/2018/04/10/africa-streets-2018-letter-of-invitation/

HELP WANTED to bring Africa Streets to Dar es Salaam for the 26-28 June 2018 ITDP MOBILIZE events

Dear Friends of sustainable transport, sustainable cities and sustainable lives, greetings,

Here is what I want to do for our common cause and that just may interest you.. It is a long shot, but after half a day of turning the ideas around in my mind I decided to give it a try and seek counsel on this from our 10k plus international readers..   Let’s have a look.

VÉLIB’ CRISIS IN PARIS: FOR JCDECAUX, THE HARDEST IS YET TO COME

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                                            Happier days for Velib’ in Paris

Reuters, Paris. 08/03/2018.

JCDecaux, which operated the Paris Vélib ‘self-service bicycle service for ten years before losing the market to Smovengo, said on March 8 that its successor was not up to the challenge of the delays accumulated in its launch.

The Smovengo consortium chosen last spring by the Autolib ‘Vélib’ Métropole union at the expense of JCDecaux, had promised to install 1,400 new stations (or 20,000 Vélib) by March 31st. According to the latest figures, only 345 stations were in service, making this schedule unreachable. Faced with the controversy and anger of Vélib’ users, the City of Paris announced that it was sending municipal staff to supervise the deployment and work of the provider, a rare decision

‘We’re doomed’ . . . Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention

Let’s see what Dr. Mayer Hillman —  eminent architect, town planner and Senior Fellow Emeritus since 1992 at the Policy Studies Institute, University of Westminster where he worked for at least thirty years —   had to offer in an interview that appeared in The Guardian last week.  By Patrick Barkham   Full text with illustrations  at https://bit.ly/2FjpEbI

W’re doomed,” says Mayer Hillman with such a  beaming smile that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.”

Hillman, an 86-year-old social scientist and senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute, does say so. His bleak forecast of the consequence of runaway climate change, he says without fanfare, is his “last will and testament”. His last intervention in public life. “I’m not going to write anymore because there’s nothing more that can be said,” he says when I first hear him speak to a stunned audience at the University of East Anglia late last year.

Joseph Stiglitz: America has been afflicted by an ideology that doesn’t work

Exclusive: America has been afflicted by an ideology that doesn’t work, says Joseph Stiglitz

Excerpts from article by Ajith Vijay Kumar, April 28, 2018 | http://www.timesnownews.com/  https://bit.ly/2HWc1EQ

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, in an exclusive interview with timesnownews.com, talks about what is wrong with current American capitalism, rise of a new kind of politics emerging from dissent towards government and more. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Econ Majors Graduate With a Huge Knowledge Gap

What’s needed is a mandatory course on ethics and the limits of knowledge.

  – By Noah Smith.   April 13, 2018.  https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-13/econ-majors-graduate-with-a-huge-knowledge-gap

 

Economics remains one of the most popular majors for college students. Most econ students, of course, don’t go on to become professional economists; instead, they fill the ranks of the U.S.’s vast upper-middle-class of business managers and professionals. The models they learn in their college classes inform the way they think about the world, even if they don’t end up using them for quantitative purposes after final exams are over.

But there’s at least one gaping hole in the education most econ majors receive. They learn plenty of models, but they aren’t often taught to think critically about what they learn. At best, they absorb a few ideas from offhand comments by their professors, or from the tone of their textbooks. As a result, many of them leave class with deep reservations over whether economics theories represent real science, or whether economists approach the world in a moral, socially responsible manner.

This problem can be addressed by making all U.S. econ majors take a philosophy-of-economics course, like the one offered at the London School of Economics. There would be two main parts of the course — epistemology and ethics.

The rough road to Sustainable Mobility: Values, priorities, behavior, choices, . . and ultimately, understanding people

WHY ARE THEY THERE? NOW? (Work trip in Jakarta on one more busy morning)  Each person behind a wheel there made a choice.  How can we give them Better Choices? That’s the rub.

What many people call “transportation” . .  is at its very essence not about roads or bridges, nor vehicles or technology, and not even about money.  Above all it is about people, their needs, fears, desires and  ultimately the decisions they make. And the backdrop — real and mental — against which they make those decision. The planner and decision maker needs to know more them and take this knowledge into the center of the planning and policy process. What makes them tick, individually and collectively.  What do they want and what they are likely to resist. And people, as we all know, are intensely complicated, personal and generally change-resistant. . But if we take the time and care we can start to understand them, at least a bit better. Which is a start.

ABOUT THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY: Peer review request and first response

Dear Eric,

Surprise! I am at my desk and your email asking me about an eventual independent “peer review” on the current state of science and accomplishment under the heading of Circular Economy arrived moments ago and is staring at me. In fact I was at a conference on just this topic in another country, which was OK, except that I could have given virtually all the talks myself.

I didn’t learn very much, which was disappointing. Waste of time, except it got me thinking more about one aspect of the circularity problem. In brief, most of the elements in the periodic table are now “in play”, and most of them are really “hitch-hikers” obtained from the ores of major industrial metals (copper, zinc, aluminum etc.).

REPUBLICAN TAX POLICY: A cruel scheme to cut social security while gorging the military-industrial complex.

The all-white, all male finance committees of both Houses of Congress got behind this bill.

With straight faces, the salesmen for the Trump tax cut have promised a miracle: increased corporate profits, a surge of investment in CAPX, more and better jobs with higher pay, all to be paid for by accelerated economic growth. In fact, the all-white, all male finance committees of both Houses of Congress, with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Chief Economic Advisor Hassett say that the US will grow at 3% p.a. or more for the next ten years – no recessions – and that the tax cuts will actually generate a profit for the government of $300 billion in that time. Sadly (and no irony intended) this combination of goodies is a pipe dream. In the next few paragraphs I will explain why, and why Trump and the Republicans are selling snake oil to the suckers. What is surprising is how many financial professionals are buying it.