Guaranteed income from common wealth
Peter Barnes writes in Yes! magazine:
THERE’S LONG been a notion that, because money is a prerequisite for survival and security, everyone should be assured some income just for being alive. The notion has been advanced by liberals such as James Tobin, John Kenneth Galbraith, and George McGovern, and by conservatives like Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Richard Nixon. It’s embedded in the board game Monopoly, in which all players get equal payments when they pass Go. And yet, with one exception, Americans have been unable to agree on any plan that guarantees some income to everyone. The reasons lie mostly in the stories that surround such income. Is it welfare? Is it redistribution? Does it require higher taxes and bigger government? Americans think dimly of all these things.
But then, there’s the exception.
Read all about it here.
Rising student demand for new economics
From the Economist:
“I DON’T care who writes a nation’s laws, or crafts its advanced treatises, if I can write its economics textbooks.” So said Paul Samuelson, an American economist who more than achieved his aim by producing a bestseller. But debate swirls around the teaching of the dismal science—nowhere more so than in Britain.
Read more here.
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.
