The fact that even this largely performative measure is being opposed by the US makes it pretty clear that no real action will be possible under the current regime.
Okay, and how is that a rebuttal? Wealth taxes cost a large amount to administer and don’t provide much revenue. Any tax should be weighed against its side effects. If a type of tax has a history of being mainly performative with little revenue, what’s the case for swallowing the side effects?
Again, it’s much easier to tax wealth as it moves because typically that movement involves putting a value on it. Estate taxes also require appraising the value of assets, but they are literally once in a lifetime.
I’m not rebutting that wealth taxes don’t really work. I’m saying that even this performative measure is not palatable to the oligarchs, then obviously any serious measure won’t be either.
If they won’t accept bloodletting to release the bad humors, then surely they won’t accept acetaminophen for a headache?
It’s bad policy. Many countries have experimented with it and given up. Others like the UK looked at it and couldn’t find a way to make it worth the administration cost to begin with. There is simply no excuse for enacting known bad policy, and no amount of blaming things on oligarchies is going to get around that.
Mixed. Quite a few policies have been passed into law as part of the “Inflation Reduction Act” (which was more geared toward climate change action). Then the bipartisan infrastructure bill finally had some halfway decent funding for rail instead of scraps. Still not enough, but it’s a start. The Biden administration set a goal of making the power industry net zero by 2035 and the US net zero by 2050. Not as good as is ideal, but the Green New Deal had some policy effects. That’s just kind of how things usually work, you throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.
The inflation reduction act is a perfect example of an idiotic policy that failed to achieve either reducing inflation, which is still climbing, or making any impact in terms of reducing emissions. In fact, U.S. fossil fuel production was reaching new highs in 2023 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50978
Then the bipartisan infrastructure bill finally had some halfway decent funding for rail instead of scraps.
And what are the tangible effects of this bill?
The Biden administration set a goal of making the power industry net zero by 2035 and the US net zero by 2050.
Once again, tangible results point in the opposite direction here as seen above. And now US is criminally putting tariffs on Chinese solar panels and EVs in a middle of a climate crisis to make things worse.
That’s just kind of how things usually work, you throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.
All the policies that have been passed do have a common theme though. What has happened consistently during Biden admin is that the oligarchs have increased their wealth substantially while the working majority became more poor. The purpose of the system is what it does.
EV infrastructure (mixed feelings on this, but its an improvement over ICE)
Incentives for solar and wind, which are working
What has happened consistently during Biden admin is that the oligarchs have increased their wealth substantially while the working majority became more poor.
Those numbers are complex because the Biden administration has dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic throughout its entire existence. But recently, wage growth has been catching up, with the lowest wage workers getting the strongest growth. Inflation is slowly getting under control. But then too the stock market has been on a high. Will that burst at any moment? Hard to tell.
And the elephant in the room is of course the way inflation is measured which excludes key things that affect people the most such as rent and gas prices since they’re deemed too volatile. This gives a very skewed picture of what’s actually happening with real inflation, as in the rise in cost of living that people are experiencing. (more on that later)
Regardless of fossil fuel production, actual CO2 equivalent is dropping and has been dropping for a long time.
This is largely a result of deindustrialization because US doesn’t produce much of anything domestically with industry being only something like 11% of the economy. So, all this shows is how US increasingly outsources emissions for the goods consumed in US. And the oil that US exports is used to fuel those emissions.
EV infrastructure (mixed feelings on this, but its an improvement over ICE)
But recently, wage growth has been catching up, with the lowest wage workers getting the strongest growth. Inflation is slowly getting under control. But then too the stock market has been on a high. Will that burst at any moment? Hard to tell.
And now we can circle back to the reality of the rise in cost of living compared to wage growth:
The fact that even this largely performative measure is being opposed by the US makes it pretty clear that no real action will be possible under the current regime.
Okay, and how is that a rebuttal? Wealth taxes cost a large amount to administer and don’t provide much revenue. Any tax should be weighed against its side effects. If a type of tax has a history of being mainly performative with little revenue, what’s the case for swallowing the side effects?
Again, it’s much easier to tax wealth as it moves because typically that movement involves putting a value on it. Estate taxes also require appraising the value of assets, but they are literally once in a lifetime.
I’m not rebutting that wealth taxes don’t really work. I’m saying that even this performative measure is not palatable to the oligarchs, then obviously any serious measure won’t be either.
If they won’t accept bloodletting to release the bad humors, then surely they won’t accept acetaminophen for a headache?
It’s bad policy. Many countries have experimented with it and given up. Others like the UK looked at it and couldn’t find a way to make it worth the administration cost to begin with. There is simply no excuse for enacting known bad policy, and no amount of blaming things on oligarchies is going to get around that.
Oh hey, I remember how this guy Sanders was proposing a lot of good and sensible policies with his green new deal idea. How’d that work out?
Mixed. Quite a few policies have been passed into law as part of the “Inflation Reduction Act” (which was more geared toward climate change action). Then the bipartisan infrastructure bill finally had some halfway decent funding for rail instead of scraps. Still not enough, but it’s a start. The Biden administration set a goal of making the power industry net zero by 2035 and the US net zero by 2050. Not as good as is ideal, but the Green New Deal had some policy effects. That’s just kind of how things usually work, you throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.
The inflation reduction act is a perfect example of an idiotic policy that failed to achieve either reducing inflation, which is still climbing, or making any impact in terms of reducing emissions. In fact, U.S. fossil fuel production was reaching new highs in 2023 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50978
And what are the tangible effects of this bill?
Once again, tangible results point in the opposite direction here as seen above. And now US is criminally putting tariffs on Chinese solar panels and EVs in a middle of a climate crisis to make things worse.
All the policies that have been passed do have a common theme though. What has happened consistently during Biden admin is that the oligarchs have increased their wealth substantially while the working majority became more poor. The purpose of the system is what it does.
Wrong. So wrong. Inflation in the US is around 3.5%, down from a high of 7%. Whether that’s attributable to the IRA is, of course, up for debate.
Regardless of fossil fuel production, actual CO2 equivalent is dropping and has been dropping for a long time.
Those numbers are complex because the Biden administration has dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic throughout its entire existence. But recently, wage growth has been catching up, with the lowest wage workers getting the strongest growth. Inflation is slowly getting under control. But then too the stock market has been on a high. Will that burst at any moment? Hard to tell.
The rate of inflation has slowed, but the inflation is still rising https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/what-is-inflation/
And the elephant in the room is of course the way inflation is measured which excludes key things that affect people the most such as rent and gas prices since they’re deemed too volatile. This gives a very skewed picture of what’s actually happening with real inflation, as in the rise in cost of living that people are experiencing. (more on that later)
This is largely a result of deindustrialization because US doesn’t produce much of anything domestically with industry being only something like 11% of the economy. So, all this shows is how US increasingly outsources emissions for the goods consumed in US. And the oil that US exports is used to fuel those emissions.
the improvement https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/03/28/ev-charging-stations-slow-rollout/
false https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61943
And this is going to get a lot worse with Biden’s tariffs on cheap solar panels and batteries from China.
🤨
Last I checked the pandemic was a global event, so why is China’s economy growing at over 5% with people’s savings hitting a record high?
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-bank-earnings-01-12-2024/card/chinese-household-savings-hit-another-record-high-xqyky00IsIe357rtJb4j
And now we can circle back to the reality of the rise in cost of living compared to wage growth: