Showing posts with label climate crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate crisis. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

A Triangular Ticket

 

If you did not hear what AOC had to say about that yahoo from Florida, you have been hiding under the rocks. If Donald Trump's mother can come over from Scotland, AOC's mother can come over from Puerto Rico, why not? And Puerto Rico is not even a foreign country. If you think it is, the Pacific is a lake near Chicago. AOC is slated to speak like Obama spoke in 2004, except the country already knows AOC. This political supernova has her signature on the bedrock of the Democratic platform. That was two years ago. The planet faces a not even 12-year deadline before a climate catastrophe fever hits. This pandemic is but a sneeze. All solutions have to be looked into including market solutions. If this pandemic is worth three trillion, the climate catastrophe is worth 30. AOC is the vital center, the animated center. The political spectrum is ablaze. She is a natural political talent fit for the giant task of climate and social justice. 


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Friday, December 06, 2019

Step By Step To Solving The Big Problems

I think it would be a good idea to start with basic accounting. This is very pro-market. This is pro-capitalism. And I don't think the Chinese have anything against basic bookkeeping. So accounting is ideology-free.

All wealth has to be put on the Blockchain. Everything every person on earth owns has to be put on the Blockchain. That is in the great interest of the property owners. That will secure property rights. It is said the biggest thing you can do for wealth creation in the poor countries is to secure as to which land plot belongs to who. Modern technology has now made that possible. Satellites can now put borders down to the inch. Once every person in the Global South knows exactly who owns what plot of land, suddenly they have all this collateral they can use to borrow money from banks and can invest in new businesses. The biggest risk-taking entrepreneurs are in the bottom billions. They will give immense growth.

There does not have to be a loss of privacy. Most people probably would not like the idea that now anyone with internet access can find out how much you are worth. For one, that might seriously jeopardize online dating! Privacy is important. Privacy is an important, fundamental human value. There is a way to put all property on the Blockchain and still preserve privacy. Maybe there can be an arrangement such that only authorized organizations, like the four layers of government - local, state, national, and world - should have access to your property records.

But we don't have a world government right now. Maybe we can start with a one percent wealth tax. Everything you own above a certain value (say a million dollars) should be subject to a wealth tax of one percent that you pay directly to the world government. To that every member country gets to pay one percent of its GDP every year. That would be the membership fee.

The super-rich should not be allowed to "hide" their money. A great tragedy of the 2008 Great Recession was that the world economy was staring at an abyss and there were trillions of dollars simply parked in so-called "safe havens."

This one percent wealth tax would work as a constant stimulus. If your wealth is not generating income, then that one percent tax might be a burden. And so there will be pressure on all wealth to grow.

It is high time we funded a UBI, which I have never defined as American Basic Income.

Too many people still don't have proper IDs. Well, now we can do that easily. All someone has to do is place their fingers on a touchscreen, and their unique fingerprint will give them a more secure ID than the US social security number. And every such biometric ID could have an instant online bank account. The UBI would be an automatic transfer of money into every bank account.

Poverty is a lack of cash. If we were to transfer something like $100 per month to every single human being every month, poverty is past tense.

Why should people who are not poor support something like that? Because UBI is infrastructure. What electricity was for the second industrial revolution and the internet was for the third, UBI (Universal Basic Income) is the same for the impending fourth industrial revolution. The fourth industrial revolution that will unleash tremendous wealth creation and usher an Age Of Abundance is not possible unless you put in place the UBI.

Everybody who can touch a touchscreen can get an ID, or look into a smart screen camera. And it does not even have to be a screen you own. And everyone can directly vote on those screens. We could have a directly elected President of the World.

There is the climate crisis. There is urbanization and the housing crisis. There is poverty. There is immigration. There is terrorism, a needle in a haystack problem. All these big problems are global in nature and scope. I am not saying the world government will solve them all. But only a world government can provide the framework in which the problems can be solved.



New Capitalism Is Techno Capitalism, Hello Marc
The Blockchain: Fundamental Like The Internet
Inequality And Climate Change Are Existential: A Blueprint For Survival
Towards A World Government
Universal Basic Income (aka Freedom Dividend) Is Not Free Money


Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Obama, Trump And Greta



Trump mocks teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg By late Tuesday morning, she had updated her Twitter bio to read: "A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future." ....... "Parents in America and around the world: he went after a 16 year old girl yesterday. ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩ unfit to serve," Scaramucci tweeted on Tuesday. ...... crossed paths with Trump at the UN General Assembly. Video captured her staring down the US President. ...... The young Swede has been open about her diagnosis of Asperger's, calling it a "superpower" that helps her activism. ....... "My diagnosis has definitely helped me keep this focus. When you are interested about something you just continue to read about it and you get super focused"



Monday, September 23, 2019

Greta Thunberg For Nobel Peace Prize

She deserves it more than Al Gore. 

Young Progressives Making Mistakes






Hillary Clinton wanted to become the first female President Of The United States so bad that she decided on the self-goal of not putting Elizabeth Warren on the ticket. Donald Trump did not make her do it. She did it herself.

A Clinton Warren ticket would have been the Clinton Gore ticket. It would have won in a landslide. But, hey, hooray for self goals.

These four are the real squad. But they don't know how to get along to go along. They don't know how to join forces. Only one will run for office. And we know ultimately it is about running for office. If you don't run and win, you are left petitioning.

Just like Hillary needed to put Warren on the ticket in 2016, these four need to merge their two organizations Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement into one organization to be called Green New Deal Nation and they need to really organize. This requires accepting AOC as the mascot. She is first in class. She is the natural political leader. And she is ready.

The planet is not going to run on your schedule. So you better run on the planet's schedule. The time is now. It is already late.

These three firebrands run around like headless chickens. They don't realize their work becomes so much easier if they can only learn to get along.

AOC's committee work in Congress is death by a thousand cuts. She needs to get out there, and she needs to get out there in a big way.

Political leadership is not about saying I have written the most research papers, or have read them, it is not about saying I have organized the most rallies, or even addressed them. That is where the other members of the squad come in.

Political leadership is saying I ran for office and I won. That is AOC.

Capitalism's Own Propaganda Machine
The Blockchain Will Make A Global Wealth Tax Possible

Saturday, September 21, 2019

The Blockchain Will Make A Global Wealth Tax Possible



Nobody is saying American Basic Income (ABI). The term is UBI, or Universal Basic Income. It necessarily has to cover every human being on the planet (and any other planet, should Elon Musk get his way).

Universal Basic Income (aka Freedom Dividend) Is Not Free Money

Forget robotics, forget automation, forget artificial intelligence, forget technology. The wealth inequality on its own is as big a problem as the climate crisis. The threat is existential. Unless the wealth gap in this country and around the world is significantly reduced, ahead lies mayhem. Human civilization will not work if the gap keeps widening. Right now it is widening.

The globe is warming. The wealth gap is widening. And the two are two sides of the same coin, like electricity and magnetism.

Inequality And Climate Change Are Existential: A Blueprint For Survival



How do you put in place a wealth tax? You need to know who everyone is. You need to know what everyone owns. You need to know what the sum total of wealth on earth is. The data on each of that is scant right now. It is certainly not in any one database.

That is where technology comes in. Look at how easy it has become to send anyone text and photos these days. We think of it as free. In 1990 it was not free. It was not possible. If you wanted to share pictures, you needed to use postal mail. It cost money. It was slow. It was not done much.

The Blockchain is the Internet on steroids. The Blockchain is going to be 100 or 1,000 times more impactful than the Internet. The Blockchain will do to money what the Internet has done to media. Everyone on earth will get a biometric ID. What every person owns in terms of wealth will get recorded on that Blockchain. And then the wealth tax is easy. According to one proposal, that of Senator Elizabeth Warren, you simply pay 2% every year on all wealth you own above 50 million dollars.

That sounds like trickle-down economics to me. Unless your wealth above 50 million is generating at least 3% income, or likely 5% or more, why will you want to keep it? And so the idea of parking money will no longer be in vogue. Right now the ultra-wealthy have trillions of dollars in parked money, wealth that exists, but that is not invested in anything productive like clean energy, or a new generation of jobs.

The global wealth tax is coming. It is unstoppable. The Blockchain does not belong to any company or country.

The Blockchain: Fundamental Like The Internet



You are looking at a world government.

Towards A World Government



All the grand challenges in the world today are global in nature. Only a world government can tackle them.









Friday, September 20, 2019

Andrew Yang MSNBC Climate Forum Town Hall