A glimpse of the future economy
From the E3 Network’s Future Economy Initiative:
Source: http://www.futureecon.org/
Diminishing Marginal Utility
Or: Is a Dollar Worth More to a Billionaire or a Secretary?
Here’s a first example of Econ4’s instructional economics videos. More to follow if and when funding permits. Please stay tuned!
Inequality.org
http://inequality.org/
Staying awake during the climate revolution
Rebecca Solnit writes in the Guardian:
Dismantling the fossil-fuel economy would undoubtedly have the side effect of breaking some of the warping power that oil has had in global and national politics. Of course, those wielding that power will not yield it without a ferocious battle – the very battle the climate movement is already engaged in on many fronts…
Read more here.
Facing climate adaptation
Econ4’s James Boyce writes in the Los Angeles Times:
In the years ahead, climate change will confront the world with hard choices: whether to protect as many dollars as possible, or to protect as many people as we can.
Read more here.
Let them eat toxic waste?
A video made by UMass-Amherst students compares wealth-based to rights-based principles for allocating environmental quality:
Global wealth: who has how much?
The latest edition of the 2014 Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse sheds light on the distribution of assets worldwide:
Source: http://savvyroo.com/chart-1365549786238-our-unequal-globes-billions-and-trillions
Read more here.
Inequality of opportunity
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz writes:
A rich country with millions of poor people. A country that prides itself on being the land of opportunity, but in which a child’s prospects are more dependent on the income and education of his or her parents than in other advanced countries. A country that believes in fair play, but in which the richest often pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than those less well off. A country in which children every day pledge allegiance to the flag, asserting that there is “justice for all,” but in which, increasingly, there is only justice for those who can afford it. These are the contradictions that the United States is gradually and painfully struggling to come to terms with as it begins to comprehend the enormity of the inequalities that mark its society.
Read more here.
More on Ebola and profit-guided health care
Unusually blunt words from World Health Organization Director Margaret Chan:
Ebola emerged nearly four decades ago. Why are clinicians still empty-handed, with no vaccines and no cure?
Because Ebola has historically been confined to poor African nations. The R&D incentive is virtually non-existent. A profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay. WHO has been trying to make this issue visible for ages. Now people can see for themselves.
