Local business: Not just a smaller version of big business
Stacey Mitchell of the Institute for Self-Reliance says changing where you shop is only the first step:
Source: http://www.ilsr.org/
20,000 People a Year Die From Effects of Fossil Fuel Generation
Econ4’s own James Boyce calls out fossil fuel companies’ “low-level terrorism”, responsible for 20,000 American deaths every year.
From The Real News
Economics denial
The New York Times reports today on attempts to suppress a Congressional Research Service report showing that tax cuts for the rich don’t create jobs:
“The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie,” the report said. “However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.”
Read the Times piece here.
Read the suppressed report here.
How not to create jobs
Lessons from Recent History 101: the Bush tax cuts.
It is Orwellian that after a decade of trillion dollar tax cuts and bailouts of the rich, and a steadily worsening jobs and employment picture for American workers, we are told to be kind to the rich and give them even more money because they are the “jobs creators”.
Read more here.
Superstorm Sandy: Harbinger of things to come?
Five years ago, this picture appeared in report titled Nation Under Siege: Sea Level Rise at Our Doorstep. It depicts what would happen – and this week, did happen – as a result of a 3-meter rise in sea levels in New York City:
Was superstorm Sandy a preview of what sea level rise will bring—permanently—to New York and other coastal cities by century’s end?
Read about it here.
Waste
The food thrown away in Europe and North America would be enough to feed all the hungry people in the world three times over.
Source: http://whypoverty.net/en_GB/video/128.
Time to pick the right winners
Senator Bernie Sanders (Ind-VT) writes on winners and losers in U.S. energy policy:
It is not about whether government is picking winners and losers, because clearly government has been doing just that for years, with the fossil fuel and nuclear industries being the big winners. What is necessary to reverse global warming and create jobs is that we pick the right winners – the technologies that will transform our energy system and protect the environment.
Read his take here.
How the rich can create jobs: pay taxes!
Nick Hanauer, a successful capitalist, on why inequality is bad and taxes on the rich are good for job creation:
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx2Y5HhplI
New Economy Working Group
Advancing democratic alternatives to oligarchy:
Extreme inequality undermines democracy, the economy, public health and culture. Concentrated wealth translates into political power to further shape elections, legislative priorities and rules in favor of global corporations and the already wealthy. This in turn leads to the kind of economic distortions that caused the 2008 financial collapse. In the lead up to the collapse, the bottom 70 percent of the U.S. population responded to stagnant wages by borrowing beyond their means, while the top 1 percent engaged in reckless speculation on highly rated but essentially worthless securities in financial markets freed from essential regulation and public oversight.
More here.
