As I listen to and read about attempts to reduce pollution, reduce reliance on foreign oil, reduce energy usage, I find myself frustrated by the lack of radicalism in the answers people propose. Their answers aren't wrong, but they don't go to the source of the problem, and so merely nibble around the edges. Nibbling is fine and admirable, and definitely has its place. And nibbling will make a bigger difference if they are nibbling at a circumference of 2X instead of X, though a larger percentage difference if we can get to a circumference of X.
The current Vice President asserted a few years ago that the American way of life was non-negotiable.
Well, if that means that what is is good -- the ultimate conservatism -- keep things just as they are because we live in the best of all possible worlds -- or -- it works just fine for my and my kind thank you very much -- a case one might reasonably make if one were in the top 1% of the wealth and income spectra, which, as I frequently mention here, receive a very disproportionate share of the productivity in this country:
- The top 1% of income recipients -- and I'm using income excluding capital gains for the moment -- have received 36% of the aggregate income gains from 2000 to 2006.
- The next 4% of income recipients have received 17% of the income gains between 2000 and 2006.
- The next 5% of income recipients have received 14% of the income gains between 2000 and 2006
- The bottom 90% of income recipients have received 33.1% of the income gains between 2000 and 2006.
For comparison: in 2000, the top 1% had 16.5% of the income excluding capital gains; the next 9% had 26.6%, and the bottom 90% had 57.8% of the income; by 2006, the corresponding figures are 18.2%, 27.0% and 54.7%. [Source, my calculations from Tables A1 and A0 of Piketty and Saez's spreadsheet through 2006.]
Is this the non-negotiable American way of life to which the Vice-President was referring? I suspect that, at bottom, it is.
- So what if this machine uses excessive amounts of the world's natural resources?
- So what if it produces more than our legitimate use of the world's carrying capacity for dealing with pollution of air and water?
- So what if, in order for us to be rich, others must be poor -- very poor?
- So what if, in order to us to continue to drive our cars everywhere we need or want to go, we need to import oil drilled in other parts of the world?
- So what if, in order for our powerful to maintain their privileges, we impinge on the rights of our own people, the rights of our contemporaries in other countries, and on the rights of future generations both here and abroad?
Ah - I've not answered the initial question. I'll come back to that in a future post, I guess -- because I think there are some very obvious answers to that question -- obvious to Georgists, anyway -- whose widespread understanding could make a big difference.
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