"...The basic nature of the painful transition involves a necessary shift from economies based on maximizing labor productivity (and thereby continually increasing the capital and energy intensity of their industrial production), which heretofore has been based on non-renewable energy, to economies that must now conserve capital, energy and materials and more fully employ their human resources. This shift will require the development of a newly designed, more efficient production system based on renewable resources and managed for sustained-yield productivity.
This is a tall order for today's economists acculturated during a brief period of fossil-fuel-based abundence, which provided the slack that allowed massive Keynesian pump priming and demand-stimulation without instant inflation."
Hazel Henderson, 1981, _Politics of the Solar Age_, Anchor Press, NY, :31
Friday, October 18, 2013
Monday, September 30, 2013
Peanut plant in Boston
Friday, September 06, 2013
Monday, August 19, 2013
Hope and Sanity?
Those before us brilliantly eliminated use of
then-scarce labor with use of then-plentiful resources. Think
Industrial Revolution and fossil fuels.
Now we live in a world emptying of resources and
brimming with laborers and pollution. Think resource depletion, 7
billion of us and climate crisis.
Shifting technologies to reduce resource use, by
using more labor, could create needed jobs, while sparing now-rare
resources, all while yielding less industrial pollution. It's a
win-win-win.
And taxing 'bads', like resource use and
pollution, instead of 'goods', like paying payroll, can lead us
toward a workably sane world by inspiring a different type of
technical innovation, that eliminates, not labor, but pollution and
rare resource use. Think carbon tax instead of payroll tax.
With great ingenuity our forebearers devised ways
that suited their world as it was, empty of people; and full of
energy, other resources and room to pollute. They made do by
incrementally progressing innovations that suited their then-current
technics. We can continue that tradition by recognizing as they did,
the limitations and features of the world about us. But our world and
theirs differ. By understanding our circumstances we can better suit
them.
Our world in 2015 averages a hectare of dry land
per couple; that is 14.8 billion hectares divided by about 7.4
billion of us. Yet during the early days of industry, say 1860, there
was 14.8/1.4 = 21.2 hectares per human couple. To stretch then-scarce
human power in guiding and harvesting twenty-one hectares of land’s
productivity, industrialists turned to what was then plentiful, the
natural resources that now power and substantiate our industrialized
world.
While we cannot do both, we can either imitate
early industrialists technology,
or imitate their ingenuity
in solving one scarcity with another existing abundance. Today’s
world is relatively scarce of some ores and of room to pollute, but
brimming with us willing workers.
Techniques of manufacturing constantly evolve,
partly in response to physical constraints, but also as constrained
by imagination. Let’s imagine our world working well with over
seven billion of us, yet with only the ores and feedstocks, and
pollutable space that we have on hand. Now, how can we get there
from here with least pain and adaptation? Can we forecast scarcity,
and anticipate it? Can we inspire each other to begin adapting before
we encounter more extreme scarcity? Can we understand and adapt to
our current circumstances, or will we persist in only imitating the
extreme resource dependence of the early industrializers, instead of
their ingenuity?
We can face future scarcity today by anticipating
future steepening resource costs via current resource taxes. But many
are wary of governments rasing only taxes, and not raising provision
of services as well. So in British Columbia a carbon tax returned all
revenue generated by reductions in income taxes as well as direct
cash outlays. This was so successful that the carbon tax is
increasingly popular even years after it’s start.
Some might say that if we shift from industrialism
in this way, say, from cars to bicycles, we will injure and kill
ourselves more. But we hurt ourselves so often today because, to do
even simple, common things, we use enormous and dangerous forces,
from vast stores of fossil fuels and such. If we apply less force and
more evolved techniques, we may well cause less damage, and not just
to ourselves.
I hope the preceding captures and shares insights
I’ve come across in the writings of E.F. Schumacher, Hazel
Henderson, John Michael Greer and Herman Daly.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Proposed Green-Rainbow Party Regions
East-Southeast
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Garden Shots, May 28th, 2013
 |
| Flowering Yellow Vetch, also called Bigflower Vetch. |
 |
| Mid: Growing Orach, Onions, Zukes foreground, With a Tarwi or two before dying tulips. |
Mid: Growing Orach, Zukes foreground, With a Tarwi or two behind.
Bottom: Right to Left: Peas with Naked Oats, walkway, Painted Mt. Corn/Carrot, Pac Choi/Wax Pole, Tatsoi/ Pole Lime, Walkway..., and lots of weeds....
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
A Massachusetts carbon tax shift might create 81,000 new Mass. jobs.
Official Massachusetts unemployment figures currently run about 6.5-7%, but the percentage of us actually working is 49%. That's 3,240,000 working out of 6,646,000 of us. Now some of us are at school, others retired, but many of us have just been left off of the unemployed rolls. And the average work week of those of us working is only 33.7 hours. It's hard luck for us short of work, but it's also a missed chance for us all, as that's a lot of needed work not getting done lately. Now and in the future we will all suffer because that work didn't get done. What we could have made won't be available as tools for further building of infrastructure, etc.
How can we encourage private hiring by existing businesses? We could start by countering what discourages hiring. When bosses hire, they pay payroll, plus some payroll taxes to Uncle Sam. These payroll taxes on employers discourage hiring. Let's discourage something else instead. Let's rebate to Massachusetts bosses what they paid to Uncle Sam in payroll taxes.
Cleverly eliminating scarce labor use by using resources with technology was a brilliant solution in a world that was short on labor and full of resources, but now we're running out of resources and have plenty of eager workers. So to save some resources for our childrens' generation while creating jobs for us now, let's discourage resource use with taxes instead of discouraging hiring with payroll taxes. How do we do that here in Massachusetts?
We in Massachusetts can rebate to employers their Federal payroll taxes paid per hour worked, raising those revenues from carbon taxes.
What would happen? As businesspeople, we'd find it cheaper to hire than to use energy resources to the extent that we've used them before.
That would slow the loss of cash paid for energy imports to our state, so there would be more left in our state economy to spend again on each other.
Let's look at math:
The employer share of
FICA OASDI 6.2% Social Security
FICA HI 1.45% Medicare
FUTA 0.6% or less Federal Unemployment
----------------------------------------------------------------
Total up to 8.25% of wages paid, is paid by bosses to Uncle Sam.
How much is that in Massachusetts?
With 3,240,000 workers earning $24.55/hr. average, over an average workweek of 33.7 hours, over 52 weeks of the year, about $139 billion in Massachusetts wages were paid, thus about $11.5 billion in taxes was paid to Uncle Sam by bosses. If we replace that with a carbon tax on the approximately 14 tons of CO2 we each used last year, with 6,646,000 of us releasing that carbon, we could rebate that private hiring tax payment with a carbon tax of $150 per ton of CO2. This would significantly inspire new hiring, and also significantly discourage resource use. Per year, it would cost us on average $2,100 in higher fuel prices, and pay bosses an average of $3,586 per worker per year working 33.7 hrs/week.
This would change our society for the better, and we can do it here in Massachusetts without federal co-ordination or permission. How much hiring can we expect by rebating that 8.25% otherwise paid by bosses to Uncle Sam? Well, in Hamermesh's Labor Demand, the consensus elasticity of labor demand is -0.3, so for every 1% decrease in wage cost to employers, bosses will increase jobs by -0.3%. Hence an 8.25% decrease in wage costs to bosses would increase hiring 2.5% If the average workweek were to stay the same, 81,000 new jobs would be created in Massachusetts.
Fuel costs would rise an average of $2,100 per person, with carbon-rich coal rising most in price. CO2's oxygen comes from air, and won't be taxed, so all the $150 will fall on the carbon sales, and carbon's percentage mass in CO2 is 1x12.01 /1x12.01 +2*16.0= 12/44, or 27%, so If coal is pure carbon, a tax of $150 per ton of CO2 would add to coal's price per ton a tax of about $556. This would vastly increase coal prices. In October 2010 coal sold for about $80/metric ton, so coal would increase in price about seven-fold.
Natural gas, if all methane (usually it is 70-90% methane, most of the balance being other hydrocarbons http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/background.asp), would have a mass ratio of about 3/4ths carbon and 1/4 hydrogen, so it's tax per ton would be about $417, or $0.068 tax/thousand cubic feet Natural Gas(http://energyworksus.com/carbon-calculator.html). Massachusetts residents averaged 58,400 cubic feet of natural gas per person per year in 2006(http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/naturalgas/per_capita_consumption.html), and so would pay $3,971 per average person per year as new carbon tax.
Electricity rates would rise as well. MA residents average 8,591 kwh/yr.(http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/us_per_capita_electricity-2010.html)
About 0.000742 tons of carbon dioxide are released per kwh, so through electricity use we of MA average 6.4 tons of CO2 released per year, which would be taxed (at $150 per ton) $960. Since coal is used to generate some electricity, these figures overlap somewhat.
These higher rates for energy would strongly inspire us to conserve resources by using labor, and to lead the world technologically with less carbon-intensive infrastructure, so we could export these valuable new technologies even more than we already do.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The original article, corrected above, was based on an elasticity of labor demand estimate that has proven anomolous. The more accepted estimate is -0.3, so that 8.25% drop in wage costs would increase employment by 2.5%, not ~20% .
How can we encourage private hiring by existing businesses? We could start by countering what discourages hiring. When bosses hire, they pay payroll, plus some payroll taxes to Uncle Sam. These payroll taxes on employers discourage hiring. Let's discourage something else instead. Let's rebate to Massachusetts bosses what they paid to Uncle Sam in payroll taxes.
Cleverly eliminating scarce labor use by using resources with technology was a brilliant solution in a world that was short on labor and full of resources, but now we're running out of resources and have plenty of eager workers. So to save some resources for our childrens' generation while creating jobs for us now, let's discourage resource use with taxes instead of discouraging hiring with payroll taxes. How do we do that here in Massachusetts?
We in Massachusetts can rebate to employers their Federal payroll taxes paid per hour worked, raising those revenues from carbon taxes.
What would happen? As businesspeople, we'd find it cheaper to hire than to use energy resources to the extent that we've used them before.
That would slow the loss of cash paid for energy imports to our state, so there would be more left in our state economy to spend again on each other.
Let's look at math:
The employer share of
FICA OASDI 6.2% Social Security
FICA HI 1.45% Medicare
FUTA 0.6% or less Federal Unemployment
----------------------------------------------------------------
Total up to 8.25% of wages paid, is paid by bosses to Uncle Sam.
How much is that in Massachusetts?
With 3,240,000 workers earning $24.55/hr. average, over an average workweek of 33.7 hours, over 52 weeks of the year, about $139 billion in Massachusetts wages were paid, thus about $11.5 billion in taxes was paid to Uncle Sam by bosses. If we replace that with a carbon tax on the approximately 14 tons of CO2 we each used last year, with 6,646,000 of us releasing that carbon, we could rebate that private hiring tax payment with a carbon tax of $150 per ton of CO2. This would significantly inspire new hiring, and also significantly discourage resource use. Per year, it would cost us on average $2,100 in higher fuel prices, and pay bosses an average of $3,586 per worker per year working 33.7 hrs/week.
This would change our society for the better, and we can do it here in Massachusetts without federal co-ordination or permission. How much hiring can we expect by rebating that 8.25% otherwise paid by bosses to Uncle Sam? Well, in Hamermesh's Labor Demand, the consensus elasticity of labor demand is -0.3, so for every 1% decrease in wage cost to employers, bosses will increase jobs by -0.3%. Hence an 8.25% decrease in wage costs to bosses would increase hiring 2.5% If the average workweek were to stay the same, 81,000 new jobs would be created in Massachusetts.
Fuel costs would rise an average of $2,100 per person, with carbon-rich coal rising most in price. CO2's oxygen comes from air, and won't be taxed, so all the $150 will fall on the carbon sales, and carbon's percentage mass in CO2 is 1x12.01 /1x12.01 +2*16.0= 12/44, or 27%, so If coal is pure carbon, a tax of $150 per ton of CO2 would add to coal's price per ton a tax of about $556. This would vastly increase coal prices. In October 2010 coal sold for about $80/metric ton, so coal would increase in price about seven-fold.
Natural gas, if all methane (usually it is 70-90% methane, most of the balance being other hydrocarbons http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/background.asp), would have a mass ratio of about 3/4ths carbon and 1/4 hydrogen, so it's tax per ton would be about $417, or $0.068 tax/thousand cubic feet Natural Gas(http://energyworksus.com/carbon-calculator.html). Massachusetts residents averaged 58,400 cubic feet of natural gas per person per year in 2006(http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/naturalgas/per_capita_consumption.html), and so would pay $3,971 per average person per year as new carbon tax.
Electricity rates would rise as well. MA residents average 8,591 kwh/yr.(http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/us_per_capita_electricity-2010.html)
About 0.000742 tons of carbon dioxide are released per kwh, so through electricity use we of MA average 6.4 tons of CO2 released per year, which would be taxed (at $150 per ton) $960. Since coal is used to generate some electricity, these figures overlap somewhat.
These higher rates for energy would strongly inspire us to conserve resources by using labor, and to lead the world technologically with less carbon-intensive infrastructure, so we could export these valuable new technologies even more than we already do.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The original article, corrected above, was based on an elasticity of labor demand estimate that has proven anomolous. The more accepted estimate is -0.3, so that 8.25% drop in wage costs would increase employment by 2.5%, not ~20% .
Friday, January 18, 2013
On Raising Massachusetts Revenues.
We check the forecast before traveling - Will we need an umbrella? When
one makes plans, it's good to have an idea of the situation that plan
will probably deal with. Mass. Governor Patrick's 2013 budget and
transportation plans are built on some assumptions of how the future
will be. There are projections of how much we will drive our cars, how
much we will work, earn and spend, etc. To plan, we make assumptions
about fuel prices and use, about employment, wages and interest rates,
and about weather. If these are stated, we can discuss how these
projections were created, how they match what we know of today's world
and how it's changing. A ten year transportation plan expecting
yesteryear's fuel prices would be like sunglasses for a rainstorm. "The
Way Forward:" must have an expectation in mind of what the future will
be like, but it's unstated in these plans. What's the forecast?
Usually we assume things will continue as they have been. But our future will not be like our past, because of what's going on in the rest of the world, where increasing numbers of people are earning and spending increasing amounts of money, and using increasing amounts of resources, emitting increasing amounts of carbon into air, increasingly altering the climate we rely on for our agriculture and food supply.
Our future in Massachusetts, the one we'll be traveling in, will either have rapidly weirding weather or rapidly rising fossil fuel prices, and probably both.
How would we respond to European-level transport fuel prices? Would we drive as much, or would we move closer to work, or work from home?
How will higher fuel prices affect the transport choices we make? Will we choose public transport instead of our cars, and to what extent?
These are difficult questions, but ignoring them won't help us plan well. It would be tragic if we fixed roads with borrowed money, only to find that we can not afford to use them as planned, because we can not afford to drive private cars as much as we do now. What we spend on new roads could be spent on new buses, or on new business's equipment.
Together, we, the people of Massachusetts, have made our home state a nice place. Hence most people moving or living here really want to buy land here. 'Location, location, location' they say, controls real estate value. That location is in relation to the rest of us, and in relation to the communities we've built together. It is that location that gives most market value to land, and it is that location which our communities made valuable in the first place. Returning a portion of the market value we have created through our communities to maintain our communities makes sense. A state tax on land purchases would return a portion of the value we created when we built these fine communities.
We tax retail sales at the state level, yet we haven't taxed real estate sales statewide. It's only fair that we tax purchases of the rich as well as purchases of the poor, if we are to tax purchases at all. The proposed 4.5 percent sales tax, applied to real estate sales, would generate about $1.5 billion, so state revenues would increase about 1/30th.
Outer space, where we can not breath, is closer to us on earth than Dorchester is to Medford. With only about 7.5 miles of air above us, and about 400 ppm of CO2 now in our air, there is no longer airspace above earth for all the carbon in the fuels we could burn. We need to encourage each other to burn less, so as to maintain the climate, the agricultural systems and thus the food we all rely on. Those before us, to eliminate labor, substituted energy resources, which was brilliant in a world empty of people and full of resources, but now we're running out of resources and have plenty of labor. It now makes more sense to use more plentiful labor and less rare resources, which will yield less pollution and more jobs.
Nothing says 'Slow down' like taxes. A carbon tax will encourage all of us to develop the methods and the equipment all the world will need tomorrow, for our food system to continue to yield our meals. So a state carbon tax can prepare our state to supply the world tomorrow with exports of goods and services. Carbon taxes inspire this needed change in technology to proceed faster, preserving resources, jobs and the environment. In Massachusetts, we each release about 14 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year. If taxed at $30/ton, as in British Colombia now, state carbon tax revenues would be raised by about $2.6 billion/year, or about a twentieth of existing state revenues.
These two new taxes would add about $4.1 billion to state revenues, about as much as higher ed. state revenues. These revenues would be relatively easy to collect. There are but a few sources of carbon entering Massachusetts; coal, natural gas, motor fuel etc. And real estate transfers are clear through county deed records.
As Massachusetts transitions to a more carbon-efficient future, access to public transit will be increasingly valued. One of the leading ways public transit is valued is through increases in real estate value due to nearby public transit access. This value increase is not due to the actions of the individual owner, but to the community's actions, is fair to tax, and taxing this neighborhood increase in value can pay for all or some of the cost of extending public transit into new neighborhoods.
To do this, laws forming special tax districts surrounding newly transit-served neighborhoods would pass, so land value increases occurring as new public transit arrives would be taxed.
Usually we assume things will continue as they have been. But our future will not be like our past, because of what's going on in the rest of the world, where increasing numbers of people are earning and spending increasing amounts of money, and using increasing amounts of resources, emitting increasing amounts of carbon into air, increasingly altering the climate we rely on for our agriculture and food supply.
Our future in Massachusetts, the one we'll be traveling in, will either have rapidly weirding weather or rapidly rising fossil fuel prices, and probably both.
How would we respond to European-level transport fuel prices? Would we drive as much, or would we move closer to work, or work from home?
How will higher fuel prices affect the transport choices we make? Will we choose public transport instead of our cars, and to what extent?
These are difficult questions, but ignoring them won't help us plan well. It would be tragic if we fixed roads with borrowed money, only to find that we can not afford to use them as planned, because we can not afford to drive private cars as much as we do now. What we spend on new roads could be spent on new buses, or on new business's equipment.
Together, we, the people of Massachusetts, have made our home state a nice place. Hence most people moving or living here really want to buy land here. 'Location, location, location' they say, controls real estate value. That location is in relation to the rest of us, and in relation to the communities we've built together. It is that location that gives most market value to land, and it is that location which our communities made valuable in the first place. Returning a portion of the market value we have created through our communities to maintain our communities makes sense. A state tax on land purchases would return a portion of the value we created when we built these fine communities.
We tax retail sales at the state level, yet we haven't taxed real estate sales statewide. It's only fair that we tax purchases of the rich as well as purchases of the poor, if we are to tax purchases at all. The proposed 4.5 percent sales tax, applied to real estate sales, would generate about $1.5 billion, so state revenues would increase about 1/30th.
Outer space, where we can not breath, is closer to us on earth than Dorchester is to Medford. With only about 7.5 miles of air above us, and about 400 ppm of CO2 now in our air, there is no longer airspace above earth for all the carbon in the fuels we could burn. We need to encourage each other to burn less, so as to maintain the climate, the agricultural systems and thus the food we all rely on. Those before us, to eliminate labor, substituted energy resources, which was brilliant in a world empty of people and full of resources, but now we're running out of resources and have plenty of labor. It now makes more sense to use more plentiful labor and less rare resources, which will yield less pollution and more jobs.
Nothing says 'Slow down' like taxes. A carbon tax will encourage all of us to develop the methods and the equipment all the world will need tomorrow, for our food system to continue to yield our meals. So a state carbon tax can prepare our state to supply the world tomorrow with exports of goods and services. Carbon taxes inspire this needed change in technology to proceed faster, preserving resources, jobs and the environment. In Massachusetts, we each release about 14 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year. If taxed at $30/ton, as in British Colombia now, state carbon tax revenues would be raised by about $2.6 billion/year, or about a twentieth of existing state revenues.
These two new taxes would add about $4.1 billion to state revenues, about as much as higher ed. state revenues. These revenues would be relatively easy to collect. There are but a few sources of carbon entering Massachusetts; coal, natural gas, motor fuel etc. And real estate transfers are clear through county deed records.
As Massachusetts transitions to a more carbon-efficient future, access to public transit will be increasingly valued. One of the leading ways public transit is valued is through increases in real estate value due to nearby public transit access. This value increase is not due to the actions of the individual owner, but to the community's actions, is fair to tax, and taxing this neighborhood increase in value can pay for all or some of the cost of extending public transit into new neighborhoods.
To do this, laws forming special tax districts surrounding newly transit-served neighborhoods would pass, so land value increases occurring as new public transit arrives would be taxed.
Brian Cady
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
Yellow Vetch, Winter 2012-13
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