Worksharing, as done in Germany, is the practice of shortening the forty hour work week to thirty two hours for as long as the recession holds, and making up most of the difference in take-home pay by issuing under-employment insurance. This would create jobs, especially for minorities, and help ease the load on welfare, etc., while protecting our communities from the desperate attempts at survival at other's cost that the unemployed will be forced to without help during this recession.
Worksharing can be done on a state-by-state basis, legislatively, and could be paid for in Massachusetts by merely extending the sales tax to real estate sales, which is only fair anyhow.
With more people able to afford staying in their homes, home values won't fall as much, which will benefit every homeowner, and less people will be stuck in overcrowded homeless shelters.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Vetch emergence rate low
Most of the Bigflower Vetch seed has not emerged. Emergence:#sown is very low, less than 1:10.
I don't know whether this is due to seedling death, poor germination or germination delay due to seed dormancy. Maybe I'll do a little digging in the sown rows and see what I find.
If this is due to inherited dormancy, I could select for no dormancy by just saving seed from these early sprouters - If recessive, then all their offspring will be early sprouters, if dominant, then some percentage of intercrossed offspring would also be early sprouters.
I don't know whether this is due to seedling death, poor germination or germination delay due to seed dormancy. Maybe I'll do a little digging in the sown rows and see what I find.
If this is due to inherited dormancy, I could select for no dormancy by just saving seed from these early sprouters - If recessive, then all their offspring will be early sprouters, if dominant, then some percentage of intercrossed offspring would also be early sprouters.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Further News of Leguminous Winter Cover Crops
Here are 'Woodford' Bigflower Vetch and 'Hope' White Lupin on Oct. 3rd.
The penny is for scale.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Leguminous Winter Cover Crops Fix Nitrogen and Hold Soil
This is 'Hope' White Lupin, winter-hardy to -10F, emerging on Sept. 25th 2010 at 50 Atherton street, Jamaica Plain, MA. I expect it to survive winter, fix nitrogen, hold soil and yield seed in late spring, at this USDA zone 6-7 site.
How equal are we financially? USers imagine current US wealth distribution
Note. Pie charts depict the percentage of wealth possessed by each quintile; for instance, in the bottom one, the top wealth quintile owns 84% of the total wealth, the second highest 11%, and so on. IF you want to, you can choose which would be the best wealth distribution for USA, and which is the real USA wealth distribution, then check by going to the source paper linked below.
This graph is modified from this paper.
Friday, August 13, 2010
How are we going to compete internationally...
with 2/5ths of our hands tied behind our back? Less than 60% of us are working!
http://www.businessinsider.com/david-rosenberg-forget-the-unemployment-rate-the-real-nightmare-is-the-employment-rate-2010-1
Isn't full employment economic national security? Can you imagine the effect on Social Security if there were too many jobs available? If immigration wasn't seen as a problem,, but an opportunity?
Why have the feds allow R & D deductions that replace workers with machines, then have to pay idled worker support? What's the hurry? Why not allow technological development to proceed at its own pace, without subsidy?
Perhaps new employers could be encouraged instead, by giving them credits toward future payroll taxes for each new position created that lasts through the year.
Labor is a different type of resource than oil or coal - what isn't used now isn't lying in the ground to be used later. That opportunity to get work done is just gone, and we are all suffering more without it being done.
------------------------------------------------------------------
There is plenty that needs doing, and is worth doing - for example, every dollar spent on public agricultural R & D yields more than ten dollars of increased value to society, and much of that within a bond's lifetime. The average rate of return per annum for public ag. R & D is over 50% per year:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eb10/eb10.pdf
There is an opportunity to sell bonds, fund agricultural research and development, and pay for the bond yields out of generally increased federal revenues due to the investment.
There is not an absence of work worth doing, there is only an absence of private work worth doing in this 'recession'. This is why the effort to shrink public expenditure is wrong - we need more investment in public goods, not less, to seed a financial recovery. Not taking care of bridges while the richest profit four times more than they ever did before means that structural changes in the economy due to technology have inordinately favored those already favored by fate. Taxing the rich, too, to fix bridges and develop the crops that can feed us through this climate crisis only makes sense.
Haiti is lying in ruins and 2/5ths of us are sitting around with nothing to do, not to mention that portion of the 'working' who are merely parasitical - witness the recent year's world food price peak now known to be due to the 'work' of speculators:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8844
---------------------------------------------------------------
The world can no longer afford weapons 'investments' when there is so much green infrastructure needed, and needed now, to avoid further Russian wildfires and wheat yield depression, further flooding death and destruction in Pakistan and China. If these weapons are used, other investments will be destroyed, and more people will suffer. Even if the weapons are merely stockpiled, the effort and resources that could have gone to a productive use are wasted. Weapons are attacks on the best of capitalism. We don't have wars between US states to settle differences, and we thrive as a result, compared to the Middle East and such.
http://www.businessinsider.com/david-rosenberg-forget-the-unemployment-rate-the-real-nightmare-is-the-employment-rate-2010-1
Isn't full employment economic national security? Can you imagine the effect on Social Security if there were too many jobs available? If immigration wasn't seen as a problem,, but an opportunity?
Why have the feds allow R & D deductions that replace workers with machines, then have to pay idled worker support? What's the hurry? Why not allow technological development to proceed at its own pace, without subsidy?
Perhaps new employers could be encouraged instead, by giving them credits toward future payroll taxes for each new position created that lasts through the year.
Labor is a different type of resource than oil or coal - what isn't used now isn't lying in the ground to be used later. That opportunity to get work done is just gone, and we are all suffering more without it being done.
------------------------------------------------------------------
There is plenty that needs doing, and is worth doing - for example, every dollar spent on public agricultural R & D yields more than ten dollars of increased value to society, and much of that within a bond's lifetime. The average rate of return per annum for public ag. R & D is over 50% per year:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eb10/eb10.pdf
There is an opportunity to sell bonds, fund agricultural research and development, and pay for the bond yields out of generally increased federal revenues due to the investment.
There is not an absence of work worth doing, there is only an absence of private work worth doing in this 'recession'. This is why the effort to shrink public expenditure is wrong - we need more investment in public goods, not less, to seed a financial recovery. Not taking care of bridges while the richest profit four times more than they ever did before means that structural changes in the economy due to technology have inordinately favored those already favored by fate. Taxing the rich, too, to fix bridges and develop the crops that can feed us through this climate crisis only makes sense.
Haiti is lying in ruins and 2/5ths of us are sitting around with nothing to do, not to mention that portion of the 'working' who are merely parasitical - witness the recent year's world food price peak now known to be due to the 'work' of speculators:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8844
---------------------------------------------------------------
The world can no longer afford weapons 'investments' when there is so much green infrastructure needed, and needed now, to avoid further Russian wildfires and wheat yield depression, further flooding death and destruction in Pakistan and China. If these weapons are used, other investments will be destroyed, and more people will suffer. Even if the weapons are merely stockpiled, the effort and resources that could have gone to a productive use are wasted. Weapons are attacks on the best of capitalism. We don't have wars between US states to settle differences, and we thrive as a result, compared to the Middle East and such.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Dump Gibbs - An open letter to President Obama
Gibbs has a federal right to speak his slander of the liberal basis of Western Civilization, but it is inappropriate for him to hold the press secretary position while doing so. I will judge you by his speech while he holds the office.
This nation has often suffered for its irrational hatred of anything seen as left. We entered Vietnam after McCathy purges left our foreign service without a left eye. Mossedek of Iran was murdered by US forces, and the hated and hateful Shah imposed, when the alternative was a third way between USSR totalitarianism and USA hegemony, which threatened no one. The perfectly predictable result is the current stand-off with Iran, and hundreds of thousands of innocent's lives lost.
We can and must tolerate Mosques near ground zero, and embrace the great USA history of left leadership and values, not because it has a monopoly on truth, but because at times it offers needed perspective, and because to surrender to such intolerance is as unAmerican and totalitarian as McCarthy was.
This 'DFH' trash talk has gone too far. If you do not sack Gibbs, I will not vote for you again.
This nation has often suffered for its irrational hatred of anything seen as left. We entered Vietnam after McCathy purges left our foreign service without a left eye. Mossedek of Iran was murdered by US forces, and the hated and hateful Shah imposed, when the alternative was a third way between USSR totalitarianism and USA hegemony, which threatened no one. The perfectly predictable result is the current stand-off with Iran, and hundreds of thousands of innocent's lives lost.
We can and must tolerate Mosques near ground zero, and embrace the great USA history of left leadership and values, not because it has a monopoly on truth, but because at times it offers needed perspective, and because to surrender to such intolerance is as unAmerican and totalitarian as McCarthy was.
This 'DFH' trash talk has gone too far. If you do not sack Gibbs, I will not vote for you again.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
USA needs jobs.
US economic stimulus via USA metrification, slavery reparations and restitution to Native Americans for stolen fossil fuel and mining rights could stimulate the economy to create needed jobs, prepare the USA for this century's manufacturing, as well as put a new, more solid moral foundation under the edifice of Western Culture.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Economic Stimulation by Slavery Reparations
Forty acres and a mule, plus inflation, to every African-American family who's ancestors were robbed of their life's work. This would go a long way toward restoring USA's moral legitimacy in the world, and help instruct other nations that tolerating slavery doesn't pay.
It could also do more for the current USA economy than trillions to too-big-to-fail bully banks.
When labor is not utilized fully in a nation, that effect is different from when oil is left in the ground. The oil can be pumped out another day, while a day unworked is gone forever. When less than all of a country's residents work fully, there's less stuff of value produced to split up between residents. Everyone is poorer.
When desperately poor, we are all likely to try anything to survive, even if it means taking away from others what is rightfully theirs. So in times of economic crisis, police budgets should be spared, if not increased, and, as done in Germany, the USA should shorten the work week so that everyone has a fair chance to work and earn, even amidst this recession.
Without moral leadership, the USA is left being nothing but the biggest bully on the block. Without jobs, the poor have no reason not to look after themselves at our expense. Without clear economic repercussions, slavery's found financially rewarding, and will continue to again worsen. Without borders, open to trade and investment, being open to people, nations themselves can and will be enslaved by vulture capitalists and such, as author John Perkins has described.
It could also do more for the current USA economy than trillions to too-big-to-fail bully banks.
When labor is not utilized fully in a nation, that effect is different from when oil is left in the ground. The oil can be pumped out another day, while a day unworked is gone forever. When less than all of a country's residents work fully, there's less stuff of value produced to split up between residents. Everyone is poorer.
When desperately poor, we are all likely to try anything to survive, even if it means taking away from others what is rightfully theirs. So in times of economic crisis, police budgets should be spared, if not increased, and, as done in Germany, the USA should shorten the work week so that everyone has a fair chance to work and earn, even amidst this recession.
Without moral leadership, the USA is left being nothing but the biggest bully on the block. Without jobs, the poor have no reason not to look after themselves at our expense. Without clear economic repercussions, slavery's found financially rewarding, and will continue to again worsen. Without borders, open to trade and investment, being open to people, nations themselves can and will be enslaved by vulture capitalists and such, as author John Perkins has described.
How to save earth from climatic crisis? 'Geritol' solution obsolete?
The 'Geritol solution' is the idea that supplementing low-iron areas of the world's oceans could allow existing oceanic cyanobacteria's iron-requiring nitrogenases to fix the nitrogen (from dissolved gaseous nitrogen) needed to fix the carbon (from dissolved atmospheric carbon dioxide) needed to reverse the climate crisis. Now that may not be needed.
Biotechnology is beginning to successfully design enzymes. A newly-designed nitrogenase which needed either no metal ion, or needed a metal cation which is more prevalent in the oceans than iron could induce enormous carbon fixation and a rebound in oceanic life, including deepwater fisheries like tuna, if that new nitrogenase was active in widespread cyanobacteria.
Such a nitrogenase, if widespread in cyanobacteria, might help to fix atmospheric carbon at rates that could restore temperature homeostasis on earth, without depriving the biosphere of sunlight energy like shading the earth with satellites or stratospheric smog would. Instead, this approach would increase the amount of sunlight energy entering the biosphere, and thus the amount of living beings and biomass on earth.
But there are risks that increased nitrogenase activity in the deep oceanic iron-poor areas could lead to such increased methane emissions, itself an greenhouse gas, that the climatic crisis would be worsened. Also, contrarily, so much carbon dioxide might be removed that the greenhouse effect might be reduced below levels earth's living being need to survive. It is probable that spreading a non-iron nitrogenase wold be an irreversible step. Therefore careful research is needed.
Biotechnology is beginning to successfully design enzymes. A newly-designed nitrogenase which needed either no metal ion, or needed a metal cation which is more prevalent in the oceans than iron could induce enormous carbon fixation and a rebound in oceanic life, including deepwater fisheries like tuna, if that new nitrogenase was active in widespread cyanobacteria.
Such a nitrogenase, if widespread in cyanobacteria, might help to fix atmospheric carbon at rates that could restore temperature homeostasis on earth, without depriving the biosphere of sunlight energy like shading the earth with satellites or stratospheric smog would. Instead, this approach would increase the amount of sunlight energy entering the biosphere, and thus the amount of living beings and biomass on earth.
But there are risks that increased nitrogenase activity in the deep oceanic iron-poor areas could lead to such increased methane emissions, itself an greenhouse gas, that the climatic crisis would be worsened. Also, contrarily, so much carbon dioxide might be removed that the greenhouse effect might be reduced below levels earth's living being need to survive. It is probable that spreading a non-iron nitrogenase wold be an irreversible step. Therefore careful research is needed.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Career advising and life planning amidst a climate crisis
Does your career or retirement plan include a livable planet? As we and our children prepare for life's challenges, we use assumptions about how the earth will be. Are those assumptions integrating modern climate science? The warming world will differ vastly from the world of our past, in terms of sea level, agriculture, rainfall patterns, fuel and food prices and industrial activity.
How will this affect you and those close to you? How can you integrate your plans with a habitable planet's needs? We need to know if our career and retirement planning integrates modern climate science in its understanding of how the world will be.
One comprehensive and affordable web tool for career planning, SIGI3 was originally created by the Educational Testing Service, a controversial organization. (For more on the controversy, see: http://www.aetr.org/index.php)
The planning horizon for career and retirement planning exceeds most Western business planning by at least a factor of four. Contrast five year business planning with twenty to forty year career and retirement planning. Those of us making these plans could make ones that would be better for ourselves and for the world with integration of sane climate science in the forecast. Is this done? Do you think the question's important? I hope you'll feel welcome to comment, below:
How will this affect you and those close to you? How can you integrate your plans with a habitable planet's needs? We need to know if our career and retirement planning integrates modern climate science in its understanding of how the world will be.
One comprehensive and affordable web tool for career planning, SIGI3 was originally created by the Educational Testing Service, a controversial organization. (For more on the controversy, see: http://www.aetr.org/index.php)
The planning horizon for career and retirement planning exceeds most Western business planning by at least a factor of four. Contrast five year business planning with twenty to forty year career and retirement planning. Those of us making these plans could make ones that would be better for ourselves and for the world with integration of sane climate science in the forecast. Is this done? Do you think the question's important? I hope you'll feel welcome to comment, below:
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Filibuster busted for good? Lieberman who?
Don Parker thinks it might be done:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-parker/forget-the-myth-51-senato_b_438108.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-parker/forget-the-myth-51-senato_b_438108.html
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Health Care Thoughts
As the final federal health care bill is assembled, there should be some consideration given to how this might work, and work well.
No Medicare-for-All option? No Anti-Trust? No Mandate!
Our country was founded on the principle of freedom, and forcing citizens to buy health insurance goes against this principle. If we are to give this up, we should get something in return, namely something that works. 'Keeping Them Honest' can be done with a real Medicare-for-All option, or with regulation. We know Medicare works, and regulation of gas, electric and such utilities works – These are two models we can understand – Let's have both. Mandates for automobile insurance does not apply as a model – Each of us choose whether to drive a car on public roads or not, while living, and thus having health risks, is not a choice. If Obama-care beats nothing at all, they will come – a good plan needs no mandate. If the uncovered must be treated, let them join then – If they can not sign then, let someone sign for them. But more to the point, why should we even settle for either/or, when both would be best?
In Sum, Medicare-for-all Option, No Industry Cartel, Strong Healthcare Police and No Mandate!
Finance Health Care Fairly, and Keep Costs Sane:
Taxing those with big health care plans the most, as opposed to those with big incomes, to pay for care for the poor, is not fair, nor particularly noble, when most of the elaborate plans are held by union members. A third way here is to tax most those who can most afford to pay; those who own the most. A federal property tax would not disproportionately hit poor communities like local property taxes do, and since you own something if and only if the government says you do, owners have the best of incentives to pay property taxes.
'This American Life' reports a third of medical costs are not medically necessary. This is an enormous opportunity that we should all take advantage of, and co-payments can inspire individuals to serve the common good here while they serve their own. But a fixed percentage co-pay can become unaffordable if one really needs healthcare – if you get very ill. One way to balance this conundrum is to let the co-pay rise as the logarithm of the expense. Here if you chose an operation ten times the cost of an alternative, you would pay twice as much – a powerful incentive, without a financially flattening upper range of values for the really unfortunate. So Health care costs should come in from those with the means, and go out with thoughtful oversight.
Why Trap Poor Women in Poverty with Unwanted Children, Just Because a Vocal Few Do Not Like Abortion?
There are plenty of cases in which the desires of a minority of us are sacrificed to the majority, as it should be in a democracy. A fetus is not a child and abortion is not murder under our law. The majority of us need not cave to a vociferous minority and add to this crowded world more children than we, individually or collectively, are ready to raise well. Life can be a blessing, or a curse. To be sure, there are moral issues on both sides of this argument, which we can safely entrust to the parents involved.
Let's fix this health care bill right, and get on to other pressing issues: Green Jobs for All Who Want Them, for fuller employment, a better economy, and a climate we can live well with,
No Medicare-for-All option? No Anti-Trust? No Mandate!
Our country was founded on the principle of freedom, and forcing citizens to buy health insurance goes against this principle. If we are to give this up, we should get something in return, namely something that works. 'Keeping Them Honest' can be done with a real Medicare-for-All option, or with regulation. We know Medicare works, and regulation of gas, electric and such utilities works – These are two models we can understand – Let's have both. Mandates for automobile insurance does not apply as a model – Each of us choose whether to drive a car on public roads or not, while living, and thus having health risks, is not a choice. If Obama-care beats nothing at all, they will come – a good plan needs no mandate. If the uncovered must be treated, let them join then – If they can not sign then, let someone sign for them. But more to the point, why should we even settle for either/or, when both would be best?
In Sum, Medicare-for-all Option, No Industry Cartel, Strong Healthcare Police and No Mandate!
Finance Health Care Fairly, and Keep Costs Sane:
Taxing those with big health care plans the most, as opposed to those with big incomes, to pay for care for the poor, is not fair, nor particularly noble, when most of the elaborate plans are held by union members. A third way here is to tax most those who can most afford to pay; those who own the most. A federal property tax would not disproportionately hit poor communities like local property taxes do, and since you own something if and only if the government says you do, owners have the best of incentives to pay property taxes.
'This American Life' reports a third of medical costs are not medically necessary. This is an enormous opportunity that we should all take advantage of, and co-payments can inspire individuals to serve the common good here while they serve their own. But a fixed percentage co-pay can become unaffordable if one really needs healthcare – if you get very ill. One way to balance this conundrum is to let the co-pay rise as the logarithm of the expense. Here if you chose an operation ten times the cost of an alternative, you would pay twice as much – a powerful incentive, without a financially flattening upper range of values for the really unfortunate. So Health care costs should come in from those with the means, and go out with thoughtful oversight.
Why Trap Poor Women in Poverty with Unwanted Children, Just Because a Vocal Few Do Not Like Abortion?
There are plenty of cases in which the desires of a minority of us are sacrificed to the majority, as it should be in a democracy. A fetus is not a child and abortion is not murder under our law. The majority of us need not cave to a vociferous minority and add to this crowded world more children than we, individually or collectively, are ready to raise well. Life can be a blessing, or a curse. To be sure, there are moral issues on both sides of this argument, which we can safely entrust to the parents involved.
Let's fix this health care bill right, and get on to other pressing issues: Green Jobs for All Who Want Them, for fuller employment, a better economy, and a climate we can live well with,
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
False health care system dicotomy?
Isn't there a third way beside nationalized single payer and the total financial free-for-all we have now?
Aren't the regulated utilities pretty well run and pretty cost effective at providing services or resources?
I do think Medicare for all could work well, but maybe there are other choices here.
There are anti-trust laws on the books already that should 'keep them honest' like single-payer is said to, if we better-regulated the now-free-market health care system to form a fair-market system.
Decades ago, the economist Samuel Bowles eloquently described how health care does not meet the four conditions needed for successful free markets:
1) There isn't ease of entry and exit from the market for buyers and sellers - When you need health care, you often can not wait to shop around. Similarly, becoming a doctor or other healthcare worker is not easy, and hospitals are not quickly opened or shut.
2) Perfect information is not perfectly available - As a patient with even a non-emergency illness, there is no time to learn the intricacies of health care science so as to be prepared to negotiate prices or choose products.
3) We can not assure lack of collusion between buyers and between sellers - Medical science requires extensive co-operation between healthcare providers - collusion is always possible, and organizations like the American Medical Association have seemed to most to be the best way to deal with the complexity of licencing, but necessarily range in behavior into collusion between sellers.
4) We can not practically have large numbers of buyers and sellers in each local health care market - Hospitals are big compared to patients, and necessarily so, I believe.
We will always want police in the streets, umpires on the field and someone looking over the health care system to make it work right and affordably, because this method of designated responsibility excells in large groups of busy equals with unequal power to coerce each other.
Single payer could work, but regulated utilities have also worked well in similar circumstances, and might be a workable solution that also fits the USA's character better.
Brian Cady
Aren't the regulated utilities pretty well run and pretty cost effective at providing services or resources?
I do think Medicare for all could work well, but maybe there are other choices here.
There are anti-trust laws on the books already that should 'keep them honest' like single-payer is said to, if we better-regulated the now-free-market health care system to form a fair-market system.
Decades ago, the economist Samuel Bowles eloquently described how health care does not meet the four conditions needed for successful free markets:
1) There isn't ease of entry and exit from the market for buyers and sellers - When you need health care, you often can not wait to shop around. Similarly, becoming a doctor or other healthcare worker is not easy, and hospitals are not quickly opened or shut.
2) Perfect information is not perfectly available - As a patient with even a non-emergency illness, there is no time to learn the intricacies of health care science so as to be prepared to negotiate prices or choose products.
3) We can not assure lack of collusion between buyers and between sellers - Medical science requires extensive co-operation between healthcare providers - collusion is always possible, and organizations like the American Medical Association have seemed to most to be the best way to deal with the complexity of licencing, but necessarily range in behavior into collusion between sellers.
4) We can not practically have large numbers of buyers and sellers in each local health care market - Hospitals are big compared to patients, and necessarily so, I believe.
We will always want police in the streets, umpires on the field and someone looking over the health care system to make it work right and affordably, because this method of designated responsibility excells in large groups of busy equals with unequal power to coerce each other.
Single payer could work, but regulated utilities have also worked well in similar circumstances, and might be a workable solution that also fits the USA's character better.
Brian Cady
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Create jobs instantly: Shorten the Work Week
German unemployment is not nearly as bad now as USA's, because Germany shortened their work week from 40 hours of work, so that the burden of recession would be more equitably distributed.
We could do this now, without lessening production, without additional taxes. Perhaps Obama could do this without the bother of Congressional approval - Here a lawyer could provide insight.
If the 32-hour work week came into effect, USA could increase the number of jobs available by one fifth. We could in some ways completely eliminate the real unemployment, rated at 17.5%, as compared to the official distorted rate of 10.2%, and still provide further jobs for those seeking additional work from abroad or with large debts or ambitious goals.
In addition, we USers would have time to both work and pursue additional schooling throughout our careers, and so help make our country more capable, while expanding our individual horizons.
We could do this now, without lessening production, without additional taxes. Perhaps Obama could do this without the bother of Congressional approval - Here a lawyer could provide insight.
If the 32-hour work week came into effect, USA could increase the number of jobs available by one fifth. We could in some ways completely eliminate the real unemployment, rated at 17.5%, as compared to the official distorted rate of 10.2%, and still provide further jobs for those seeking additional work from abroad or with large debts or ambitious goals.
In addition, we USers would have time to both work and pursue additional schooling throughout our careers, and so help make our country more capable, while expanding our individual horizons.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Sunday, December 06, 2009
The following is in response to President Obama's call for participation in the Community Jobs Forum, which I believe is timely, important and good. First are the questions the Administration asks, beneath each line, then a response.
---------------------------------
From what you have seen, or seen reported about the President’s Jobs Forum on December 3rd, what seems relevant to your community?
My 'community' is one consisting of working scientists. I have not heard anything about the outcome of the Jobs forum at the White House.
--------------------------------------
What parts of your local economy are working or thriving? What businesses and sectors are expanding and hiring?
I don't know of any, but I hear rumors of possible research funding coming in phytoremediation research and development.
-----------------------------------------
What are the opportunities for growth in your community? What businesses and sectors seem poised to rebound?
Bicycling support industries? I don't have much insight here, sorry.
------------------------------------------------------
What do you see as the “jobs of the future”?
As far as 'jobs of the future' I see tremendous opportunity in shifting from research and development of 'labor-eliminating' technology to technologies which eliminate resource use and waste/pollution production. I must acknowledge that this insight is not originally mine, but comes from the brilliant and accomplished Hazel Henderson, the economist who declared conventional economics 'a form of brain damage' in that it it only acknowledges value for the easy-to-price things, unlike air, clean drinking water and other essential but hard to price things.
Please replace Geithner with Henderson, or at least see: http://www.hazelhenderson.com/
Also, if scientific grant-giving foundations like NIH and NAS, etc. were to, in the evaluation for funding of grant proposals, increase the score, to even a slight degree, of proposals creating jobs, and furthermore if the foundations were to increase the score of such proposals in proportion to how many person-years of work they would create, then enormous numbers of positions could be created very rapidly, yet in well-thought-though scientific efforts by leading scientists.
Additionally, devising a sliding scale of the extent of tax-exemption for R & D done by corporations which favored, by exxempting form more taxes, those r & D efforts which would create, or at least not eliminate, jobs could also rapidly both expand employment while also shifting from labor-elminating technologies to the more needed waste-eliminating ( or pollution-eliminating) and resource-use-eliminating technique.
-------------------------------------------------------------
What are the obstacles to job creation in your community? What could make
local businesses more likely to start hiring?
Basically the inordinate international strength of the dollar. A correction in the valuation of the dollars global purchasing power downward would lead to import replacement, resource efficiency and export industry growth, which would induce USA to lead the world again in the globally-needed cutting edge technologies, now to be energy efficiency, pollution control, appropriate energy generation, etc.
------------------------------------------
What other issues and ideas should the President consider?
Al Qaeda is out of Afghanistan, and riven with internal divisions (see: _The New Republic_ June 2008) the USA should declare victory in Afghanistan and return victorious to home, and should wrap up Iraq as either a draw or the previous regime's mistake.
In Copenhagen, the USA should acknowledge First World climate reparation debt, and pay for it with future appropriate technology transfers. Our only acceptable future can include us The current alliance between the pseudo-Christian fanatics in the USA and the pseudo-Zionist fanatics in Isreal serves the needs of neither nation. The USA should now support efforts towards one-nation solutions, via a single election held in both Israeli and Palastinian areas, including Israel, West Bank and Gaza, as well as among Palastinian refugee communities in Jordan, Lebanon and elsewhere. In such elections centrist peace-oriented candidates will win, leaving devisive extremist out of power.
Also, we should follow the thinking of the great USA citizen Henry George in instituting a national property tax akin to local taxes, to better fund government. Sales taxes hit the poor too disproportionately hard, and income taxes discourage employment in comparison to resource and energy use. Ownership is imaginary, but useful because it encourages stewardship. Ownership requires government, and should therefore support government, as stated elsewhere at the blog 'Envision Hope or Perish', which please see.
Brian Cady
---------------------------------
From what you have seen, or seen reported about the President’s Jobs Forum on December 3rd, what seems relevant to your community?
My 'community' is one consisting of working scientists. I have not heard anything about the outcome of the Jobs forum at the White House.
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What parts of your local economy are working or thriving? What businesses and sectors are expanding and hiring?
I don't know of any, but I hear rumors of possible research funding coming in phytoremediation research and development.
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What are the opportunities for growth in your community? What businesses and sectors seem poised to rebound?
Bicycling support industries? I don't have much insight here, sorry.
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What do you see as the “jobs of the future”?
As far as 'jobs of the future' I see tremendous opportunity in shifting from research and development of 'labor-eliminating' technology to technologies which eliminate resource use and waste/pollution production. I must acknowledge that this insight is not originally mine, but comes from the brilliant and accomplished Hazel Henderson, the economist who declared conventional economics 'a form of brain damage' in that it it only acknowledges value for the easy-to-price things, unlike air, clean drinking water and other essential but hard to price things.
Please replace Geithner with Henderson, or at least see: http://www.hazelhenderson.com/
Also, if scientific grant-giving foundations like NIH and NAS, etc. were to, in the evaluation for funding of grant proposals, increase the score, to even a slight degree, of proposals creating jobs, and furthermore if the foundations were to increase the score of such proposals in proportion to how many person-years of work they would create, then enormous numbers of positions could be created very rapidly, yet in well-thought-though scientific efforts by leading scientists.
Additionally, devising a sliding scale of the extent of tax-exemption for R & D done by corporations which favored, by exxempting form more taxes, those r & D efforts which would create, or at least not eliminate, jobs could also rapidly both expand employment while also shifting from labor-elminating technologies to the more needed waste-eliminating ( or pollution-eliminating) and resource-use-eliminating technique.
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What are the obstacles to job creation in your community? What could make
local businesses more likely to start hiring?
Basically the inordinate international strength of the dollar. A correction in the valuation of the dollars global purchasing power downward would lead to import replacement, resource efficiency and export industry growth, which would induce USA to lead the world again in the globally-needed cutting edge technologies, now to be energy efficiency, pollution control, appropriate energy generation, etc.
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What other issues and ideas should the President consider?
Al Qaeda is out of Afghanistan, and riven with internal divisions (see: _The New Republic_ June 2008) the USA should declare victory in Afghanistan and return victorious to home, and should wrap up Iraq as either a draw or the previous regime's mistake.
In Copenhagen, the USA should acknowledge First World climate reparation debt, and pay for it with future appropriate technology transfers. Our only acceptable future can include us The current alliance between the pseudo-Christian fanatics in the USA and the pseudo-Zionist fanatics in Isreal serves the needs of neither nation. The USA should now support efforts towards one-nation solutions, via a single election held in both Israeli and Palastinian areas, including Israel, West Bank and Gaza, as well as among Palastinian refugee communities in Jordan, Lebanon and elsewhere. In such elections centrist peace-oriented candidates will win, leaving devisive extremist out of power.
Also, we should follow the thinking of the great USA citizen Henry George in instituting a national property tax akin to local taxes, to better fund government. Sales taxes hit the poor too disproportionately hard, and income taxes discourage employment in comparison to resource and energy use. Ownership is imaginary, but useful because it encourages stewardship. Ownership requires government, and should therefore support government, as stated elsewhere at the blog 'Envision Hope or Perish', which please see.
Brian Cady
Sunday, November 22, 2009
It is time to open a Federal Reserve bank:
The Fed is loaning money at 0% interest, while mortgage rates are about 5%.
If the deposit from the Fed was like a checking account, in that the money could be called back at any time, then the Fed requires 10% of the deposited amount held in reserve as cash. Then the bank could earn 5% times 10 = 50% interest on the money held in reserve every year.
But if the deposits from the Fed are like CDs, in which you basically can not readily get your money out at any time, but instead have to wait, then the Fed has a zero requirement for the amount of cash reserves to be held by the bank. Therefore a bank could earn an infinite percentage return on the money it holds in reserve, when loaning money borrowed at 0% and loaned out at 5%.
Our tax dollars hard at work...
If the deposit from the Fed was like a checking account, in that the money could be called back at any time, then the Fed requires 10% of the deposited amount held in reserve as cash. Then the bank could earn 5% times 10 = 50% interest on the money held in reserve every year.
But if the deposits from the Fed are like CDs, in which you basically can not readily get your money out at any time, but instead have to wait, then the Fed has a zero requirement for the amount of cash reserves to be held by the bank. Therefore a bank could earn an infinite percentage return on the money it holds in reserve, when loaning money borrowed at 0% and loaned out at 5%.
Our tax dollars hard at work...
Ownership is imaginary, but useful...
Ownership is imaginary, but useful, because it rewards stewardship of resources. Who would oil a bike they did not expect to be able to use later? Who would sow if they could not expect to be the one to reap?
Government enforces ownership. Thus owners are the chief beneficiaries of government. Where government breaks down, as in Somalia, there is no longer any authority to turn to in cases of ownership contention, like theft or piracy. Thus violence becomes the settling factor, and force the arbiter in disputes. There ceases to be an incentive for stewardship of resources, since there is no security of ownership, as government provides.
Now, with the climate crisis looming, is not the time to weaken support for stewardship of natural resources for a number of reasons:
1) if energy resource owners do not expect to have secure access to in-the-ground reserves, they may sell them cheap, leading to an increase in carbon-rich fuel use, and thus carbon release to the atmosphere.
2) if shoreline land owners do not expect to continue to control these lands, they will not be motivated to join together politically to fight the climate crisis.
It follows that it is in the best interests of owners to support government. Hence property taxes make a lot of sense, since the people paying; the owners, stand to gain the most by the continuation of the current order that government maintains.
This is why it makes sense to raise property taxes in a recession/depression - we need to maintain civil order to prevent greater suffering, and owners need this at least as much if not more than others, since it is government that enforces ownership.
In our industrialized world, civil order is the basis for survival, not just a pleasantry we can do without. In this time of economic uncertainty, we all are trying new ways of making money, of surviving as individuals. Some of these ways will be against the general good. We need to stop these methods, and we need to be extra vigilant now in these hard financial conditions, because dire circumstances lead to innovation, both good and bad, and we need to maintain the expectations that the the property concept supports. These are, namely, that taking care of things is the best way to act, and that destroying something of greater public value only for lesser, but personal, gain will not work.
Another powerful concept is that of designated responsibility. For example, each of the rest of us stand to gain by enforcing sensible laws onto the selfish innovator of a new type of crime, and we each have some legal responsibility to enforce some laws in some circumstances, but as a group, we typically designate police officers and the courts with the specific responsibility of enforcing law, and furthermore each group of police officers takes responsibility for a certain area, and divide the work into shifts of time, when each work a given beat. This works
better because responsibility is designated.
The current financial disaster came about because no one was responsible for the enforcement of law onto the new financial entities allowed by neo-cons via revoking the Glass-Steagall act. Yet in response we act as though it makes sense to match declining tax revenues with reduced police forces, and reduced enforcement of law, when the opposite actually makes the most sense. The opposite is increased enforcement during these times of temptation, and increased taxes to pay for it, especially on those who stand to benefit the most by the continuation of our imaginary ownership concepts.
It would be deeply ironic if the financial disaster to which lax regulation led us, led us in turn to lax regulation via government cutbacks, and if this led those most liable to gain by the continuation of the concept of ownership to cut back on just that which best protects the advantage they have worked so hard to create.
We will need more than increased enforcement to get us out of the current financial and environmental bind - we will need to rethink what we do, and take wise counsel. One of the classic ways to take counsel is by reading.
With the invention of the printing press, many can now read what a few have written. Just a few, who have figured out a better way, can lead many along that path. Instead of only having each of us read once a book we bought for ourselves, we have invented libraries, and made them public, so that many can benefit from one book of wisdom. It is a powerful technique that strengthens in the inevitable clash with other different ways of doing things. As we each learn how profoundly changed our individual circumstances are by the financial turmoil of the era, we will each need to rethink our approaches, figure out new ways of doing things, or old ways of doing things that newly make sense, given the new higher cost of energy, and new realization of the great cost of releasing so much carbon from fuel use. There is a great opportunity to take counsel from the learned, via their books, through public libraries, and we can assist each other in doing so by expanding library hours, and by directing acquisition departments to shift emphasis from the purely entertaining to the substantive books.
Libraries also provide access to the powerful tool of the internet for those without the tools at home, It is especially important to provide access to hope, to honest ways of bettering one's life in ways that benefit society, instead of degrading society, to these of us who don't have much, and who are thus more tempted by the struggle for survival to better themselves at the expense of others. Expanded library hours could help here too.
Government enforces ownership. Thus owners are the chief beneficiaries of government. Where government breaks down, as in Somalia, there is no longer any authority to turn to in cases of ownership contention, like theft or piracy. Thus violence becomes the settling factor, and force the arbiter in disputes. There ceases to be an incentive for stewardship of resources, since there is no security of ownership, as government provides.
Now, with the climate crisis looming, is not the time to weaken support for stewardship of natural resources for a number of reasons:
1) if energy resource owners do not expect to have secure access to in-the-ground reserves, they may sell them cheap, leading to an increase in carbon-rich fuel use, and thus carbon release to the atmosphere.
2) if shoreline land owners do not expect to continue to control these lands, they will not be motivated to join together politically to fight the climate crisis.
It follows that it is in the best interests of owners to support government. Hence property taxes make a lot of sense, since the people paying; the owners, stand to gain the most by the continuation of the current order that government maintains.
This is why it makes sense to raise property taxes in a recession/depression - we need to maintain civil order to prevent greater suffering, and owners need this at least as much if not more than others, since it is government that enforces ownership.
In our industrialized world, civil order is the basis for survival, not just a pleasantry we can do without. In this time of economic uncertainty, we all are trying new ways of making money, of surviving as individuals. Some of these ways will be against the general good. We need to stop these methods, and we need to be extra vigilant now in these hard financial conditions, because dire circumstances lead to innovation, both good and bad, and we need to maintain the expectations that the the property concept supports. These are, namely, that taking care of things is the best way to act, and that destroying something of greater public value only for lesser, but personal, gain will not work.
Another powerful concept is that of designated responsibility. For example, each of the rest of us stand to gain by enforcing sensible laws onto the selfish innovator of a new type of crime, and we each have some legal responsibility to enforce some laws in some circumstances, but as a group, we typically designate police officers and the courts with the specific responsibility of enforcing law, and furthermore each group of police officers takes responsibility for a certain area, and divide the work into shifts of time, when each work a given beat. This works
better because responsibility is designated.
The current financial disaster came about because no one was responsible for the enforcement of law onto the new financial entities allowed by neo-cons via revoking the Glass-Steagall act. Yet in response we act as though it makes sense to match declining tax revenues with reduced police forces, and reduced enforcement of law, when the opposite actually makes the most sense. The opposite is increased enforcement during these times of temptation, and increased taxes to pay for it, especially on those who stand to benefit the most by the continuation of our imaginary ownership concepts.
It would be deeply ironic if the financial disaster to which lax regulation led us, led us in turn to lax regulation via government cutbacks, and if this led those most liable to gain by the continuation of the concept of ownership to cut back on just that which best protects the advantage they have worked so hard to create.
We will need more than increased enforcement to get us out of the current financial and environmental bind - we will need to rethink what we do, and take wise counsel. One of the classic ways to take counsel is by reading.
With the invention of the printing press, many can now read what a few have written. Just a few, who have figured out a better way, can lead many along that path. Instead of only having each of us read once a book we bought for ourselves, we have invented libraries, and made them public, so that many can benefit from one book of wisdom. It is a powerful technique that strengthens in the inevitable clash with other different ways of doing things. As we each learn how profoundly changed our individual circumstances are by the financial turmoil of the era, we will each need to rethink our approaches, figure out new ways of doing things, or old ways of doing things that newly make sense, given the new higher cost of energy, and new realization of the great cost of releasing so much carbon from fuel use. There is a great opportunity to take counsel from the learned, via their books, through public libraries, and we can assist each other in doing so by expanding library hours, and by directing acquisition departments to shift emphasis from the purely entertaining to the substantive books.
Libraries also provide access to the powerful tool of the internet for those without the tools at home, It is especially important to provide access to hope, to honest ways of bettering one's life in ways that benefit society, instead of degrading society, to these of us who don't have much, and who are thus more tempted by the struggle for survival to better themselves at the expense of others. Expanded library hours could help here too.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Afghan War Cost: What can we afford?
I read today that the US counterinsurgency field manual recommends a soldier for every 50 residents of an insurgent region:
http://www.tnr.com/article/world/stalemate
Afghan population estimates range from 23-33 million people currently, with most estimates being near 30 million, (from an English language Google search of UN and CIA sources). Let's assume the population is 30 million. So an occupying force of 600,000 would be needed.
With non-US NATO troops at 34,000, the Afghan army currently near 100,000 and the Afghan police at 80,000, there would need to be about 386,000 more troops put up by the US.
How will McCrystal get it done with 40,000 over the 68,000 US troops already there? Won't he be 386k - 108k = 278,000 US troops short?
Then the expected cost of occupying Afghanistan successfully for the US would be 386,000 troops times US$1 million per troop, or about US$ 386 billion per year.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGvM0165Q9bs
If we can get local control set up in a decade (unlikely, says Rory Stewart, Harvard:)
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/testimonies/rory-stewart-on-afghanistan
then the total US cost would be US$ 3.86 trillion; if it took twenty years, the US cost would be US$ 7.72 trillion.
We have a US population of about 0.3 billion, so that is $26,000 per person, right? Can we get that kind of money? If we could, aren't there better things to do with the money? What will assuming this kind of debt do to the dollar's strength?
http://www.tnr.com/article/world/stalemate
Afghan population estimates range from 23-33 million people currently, with most estimates being near 30 million, (from an English language Google search of UN and CIA sources). Let's assume the population is 30 million. So an occupying force of 600,000 would be needed.
With non-US NATO troops at 34,000, the Afghan army currently near 100,000 and the Afghan police at 80,000, there would need to be about 386,000 more troops put up by the US.
How will McCrystal get it done with 40,000 over the 68,000 US troops already there? Won't he be 386k - 108k = 278,000 US troops short?
Then the expected cost of occupying Afghanistan successfully for the US would be 386,000 troops times US$1 million per troop, or about US$ 386 billion per year.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGvM0165Q9bs
If we can get local control set up in a decade (unlikely, says Rory Stewart, Harvard:)
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/testimonies/rory-stewart-on-afghanistan
then the total US cost would be US$ 3.86 trillion; if it took twenty years, the US cost would be US$ 7.72 trillion.
We have a US population of about 0.3 billion, so that is $26,000 per person, right? Can we get that kind of money? If we could, aren't there better things to do with the money? What will assuming this kind of debt do to the dollar's strength?
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