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First, the problem threatening the global environment is the accumulation of capital under the present phase of monopoly-finance capital, and not just economic growth in the abstract. That is, issues of the qualitative nature of development as well as quantitative development are involved. This raises the question of the ecological value-form associated with capitalism in its monopoly-finance phase, geared to the promotion of economic and ecological waste as a stimulus to accumulation. Today the rich economies are well developed and capable of satisfying the material needs of their populations, and of emphasizing qualitative human development. Capitalism, however, requires continual value expansion and commodity consumption, with increasing throughputs of energy and materials. 46 This is promoted today by means of a massive sales effort, amounting to well over a trillion dollars a year in the United States, and through a vast outpouring of economic waste in the form of synthetic goods that are toxic to the environment. 47 As the Marxian economist Paul Baran wrote in the 1960s, “People steeped in the culture of monopoly capitalism do not want what they need and do not need what they want.” 48 On top of this vast waste system (including military waste), which drives accumulation, is a financialized superstructure that has enabled the system to transfer wealth and income more rapidly to the 0.01 percent at the top of society. 49 In the new financial architecture that has emerged the credit-debt system dominates over the entire global economy. It is this irrational system of artificially stimulated growth, economic waste, financialized wealth, and extreme inequality that needs to be overturned if we are to create a society of ecological sustainability and substantive equality.

If economic growth in the wealthy countries continues as at present— even by the standards of our current period of relative economic stagnation —there is very little or no chance of avoiding breaking the world climate budget with disastrous global consequences. It is the growth in the scale of the economy, and the destructive tendencies of our ecologically inefficient, technologically destructive society, geared to roundabout production— whereby plastic spoons are made in China and shipped to the United States where they have a lifetime use of a few minutes before reentering the waste stream, generating all sorts of toxic chemicals in the process—that are threatening the biogeochemical processes of the entire planet. Capital’s social metabolic processes attempt to re-create the planet in its own image, treating all planetary boundaries as mere barriers to surmount, thus generating a global metabolic rift on a rapidly warming planet. All of this points to the need to place limits on economic growth, and specifically on the expansion of today’s disaster capitalism.

Proponents of the standard public narrative about the history of human welfare hold that extreme destitution is a natural condi- tion, which only began to decline with the rise of capitalism. Yet the national accounts data on which this narrative relies cannot legitimately be used to draw these conclusions, and extant data on wages, height, and mortality do not support them. In all of the regions reviewed here, fully-employed unskilled labourers in the early 18th century had incomes higher than the extreme pov- erty line. Far from a normal or natural condition, extreme destitu- tion is a sign of severe social and economic distress, arising during periods of heaupval and dislocation such as war, famine, and state repression. As for the impact of capitalism on human welfare: data on wages, human height and mortality indicate that the rise and expansion of the capitalist world-system from circa 1500 caused a decline in nutritional standards and health outcomes. Recovery from this prolonged condition of crisis occurred only recently: the late 19th century in Northwest Europe and the mid-20th cen- tury in the periphery.

If one starts from the assumption that extreme poverty is the natural state of humanity, then it may appear as good news that only a fraction of the global population lives in extreme poverty today. However, if extreme poverty is a sign of severe social dislo- cation, relatively rare under normal conditions, then it should con- cern us that - despite many instances of progress since the middle of the 20th century - such dislocation remains so prevalent under contemporary capitalism. Depending on the subsistence basket one uses to measure poverty, as of 2008, between 200 million and 1.21 billion people live in extreme poverty (Moatsos 2017; 2021; see also our discussion in Appendix VI).18 While direct com- parisons with the wage data are difficult because of the variety of baskets used, this suggests that under contemporary capitalism hun- dreds of millions of people currently live in conditions comparable to Europe during the Black Death (Figures 4 & 5), the catastrophes induced by the American genocides (Figure 7) and the slave trade (Figure 9), or famine-ravaged British India (Figure 11). To the extent there has been progress against extreme poverty in recent decades, it has generally been slow and shallow.

It would be a serious error to reduce the entire planetary ecological emergency signaled by the rise of the Anthropocene simply to climate change, as the other critical planetary boundaries, each of which represent an Earth System emergency, are being crossed as well, with immense dangers for humanity. For example, the biodiversity crisis stemming mainly from the destruction of the world’s ecosystems is arguably as serious as climate change. 45 Nevertheless, climate change currently threatens irreversible change on a scale and with a speed that has no counterpart. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are now “higher than at any time in at least two million years,” heating up the entire earth via the greenhouse effect. 46

Part 1 of Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, published in August 2021 by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), indicated that even in the case of SSP1-1.9, the most optimistic scenario in its Shared Socioeconomic Pathways—in which carbon emissions would peak globally by 2025, a 1.5°C increase in global average temperature over preindustrial levels would be avoided until 2040, and the goal of net-zero carbon emissions would be reached by 2050—the consequences for global humanity would nevertheless be catastrophic by the measure of all historical precedents. 47 This would include various “compound” events of extreme weather, sometimes known as “global weirding” (including record heatwaves, persistent droughts, out-of-control wildfires, megastorms, torrential rainfall, unprecedented floods, glacial melts, and sea level rise), affecting every region and ecosystem of the world. The second-best scenario (also optimistic), in which global average temperature would be stabilized at less than 2°C (at around 1.7°C)—is a sort of last hope scenario and carries with it dangers disproportionately greater. 48 The other three scenarios are almost unthinkable, although more consistent with current trends, threatening the very existence of civilization and humanity itself.

But there is a related dynamic at work in the global war economy: the need for dominant groups to suppress mass discontent and deflect the crisis of state legitimacy. International frictions escalate as states, in their efforts to retain legitimacy, seek to sublimate social and political tensions and to keep the social order from fracturing. All around the world, a “people’s Spring” has taken off. From Chile to Lebanon, Iraq to India, France to the United States, Haiti to Nigeria, South Africa to Colombia, Jordan to Sri Lanka, waves of strikes and mass protests have proliferated and, in some instances, appear to be acquiring an anti-capitalist character. Wars and external enemies allow the ruling groups to deflect attention away from domestic malaise in their effort to maintain a grip on power as the crisis deepens.

The transnational elite, led by Washington, have had to conjure up one enemy after another to legitimate militarized accumulation and deflect crises of state legitimacy and capitalist hegemony onto external enemies and contrived threats.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked fierce political debate on the geopolitical consequences of the conflict. But less noticed and equally as important, the war has paved the way for a more sweeping militarization of what was already a global war economy mired in deep political and economic crisis. Geopolitical tensions and international conflicts may be tragic for those caught up in conflagrations such as in Ukraine — but advantageous for those seeking to legitimize expanding military and security budgets and open up new opportunities for capitalist profit-making in the face of chronic stagnation and social discontent.

In late March, the Biden administration, citing the Russian invasion, called for a $31 billion increase in the Pentagon budget over the previous year and on top of an emergency appropriation weeks earlier of $14 billion for Ukraine’s defense. Prior to the invasion, in late 2021, the U.S. government approved a nearly $800 billion military budget, even as, in the same year, it ended the war in Afghanistan. Almost overnight following the Russian invasion, the U.S., European Union, and other governments around the world allocated billions of dollars in additional military spending and sent streams of military hardware and private military contractors into Ukraine.

As the COVID-19 pandemic expanded across the world in early 2020, it generated the “first global supply chain crisis.”1 Global supply chains represent the integrative structure of contemporary global capitalism, and any disruption to them potentially threatens the functioning of the system itself.

In response to the crisis, the global supply chain community, encompassing academics and policymakers keen to promote their purported benefits, are proposing ways to increase supply chain “resilience.” The notion has been defined by the World Trade Organization and Asian Development Bank as “the ability of these chains to anticipate and prepare for severe disruptions in a way that maximizes capacity to absorb shocks, adapt to new realities, and re-establish optimized operations in the shortest possible time.”2 Enhanced global supply chain resilience is to be pursued through a range of policies to be implemented by lead firm managers and supported by states.

[Evgeny and Frencesca, “RETHINKING THE SMART CITY: DEMOCRATIZING URBAN TECHNOLOGY,” Rosa Luxemberg Foundation, January 2018, , Accessed 7/2/23, GDS – PL]

Two such processes are of particular importance to our discussion: the delegation and subcontracting of responsibilities previously reserved to public institutions to private players, along with the enlistment of private financial capital—mostly from pension funds, insurance firms, various alternative asset management funds—into the management, maintenance, and construction of infrastructure, most of which operates at a local level. Both exhibit significant, albeit underexplored connections to the smart city agenda, as both require an extensive infrastructure of gathering, analyzing, and acting upon data to succeed and proliferate. Subcontracting can, of course, be described as a further privatization of public services— indeed, such a description would be entirely correct. While the exact service providers and distribution of responsibility between them and public institutions vary from country to country, we can nonetheless identify several similarities.

[Evgeny and Frencesca, “RETHINKING THE SMART CITY: DEMOCRATIZING URBAN TECHNOLOGY,” Rosa Luxemberg Foundation, January 2018, , Accessed 7/2/23, GDS – PL]

2. Smartness and Neoliberalism

One version functions as a kind of noblesse oblige—a handout to the unfortunates being made obsolete by robots smarter and more efficient than they are. Another version aspires to egalitarian universalism and challenges the legitimacy of privately accumulated wealth. There’s a version that sees UBI as the spark for a generation of entrepreneurs, and another that simply attempts to stave off a revolt of the precarious masses.

Basic income is therefore often posited as a post-ideological solution suited to a new era of politics: the odd confluence of interest from the left and right tends to be read as a sign that political positions should be eschewed in favor of rational compromise. But UBI’s cross-ideological appeal is the bug, not the feature. Because basic income is politically ambiguous, it also has the potential to act as a Trojan horse for the left or right: left critics fret that it will serve as a vehicle for dissolving the remains of the welfare state, while proponents herald it as the “capitalist road to communism.” The version of basic income we get will depend, more than policies with a clearer ideological valence, on the political forces that shape it.

Universal basic income, a guaranteed, no-strings-attached income for the entire population, is presented as a progressive solution to the “end of work.” But those who promote a UBI are doing one of two things. They either entertain illusions in a top-down palliative measure for the miseries of the capitalist system, or they are searching for an impossible shortcut to the challenges of organizing the working class, the only social force that can overcome capitalism. In either case, they lack any sense of realism.

The “end of work” narrative

Organized collectivities asserting the legitimacy of their place in organizing their experience of the health system could provide energy towards further struggles in health and beyond. Along with patients, workers themselves have clear knowledge of the issues within the field which should be married to such a movement in discrediting the positions of management, capital, and the state. Workers movements should likewise contest more control over policy, direction and administration of health institutions, and do so under self-organized workers councils allied with organized communities. This could take the form of combative communal structures uniting neighborhood, municipal, and regional community councils with horizontal workplace councils which expropriate and demand wealth from both the state and capital, and challenging the control of existing public decision making bodies.

Most importantly there is an opportunity to change what is considered a part of health. Health is not merely treating existing diseases or avoiding potential disease. Human flourishing is an expression of good health. It is also something that societies can inhibit or promote. Many things that have been constructed as natural are in fact socially shaped illnesses. For example, suicide, traffic fatalities, and concentrated urban violence represent challenges to the capitalist city and of course are significant causes of morbidity and population health burdens. Such phenomena have deep impacts on multiple points of the health system. A robust health movement could challenge urban space, transit, education, and even the type and availability of work itself in the medium term. Bringing these issues under debate and organizing actions around such, patient and workers movements could further weaken the enemies of public health and broaden the appeal of a direct action movement aimed at the welfare of society as a whole.

It looks to become even more central however. Estimates are the medicare funds will have to reduce benefits within two decades.⁠7 States that did not expand Medicaid have offered private market based plans that within a few years are already not affordable even with subsidies.⁠8 Where Medicaid was expanded projections for expenses are to rise significantly putting strain on already underfunded systems that suffer from severe shortages of specialists and resources.⁠9 In reality we are witnessing the slow unfolding of a multi-decade health care crisis. Health-related spending makes up roughly a quarter of the entire federal budget and is expanding rapidly. Medicare, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance Programs alone represent 16% of the federal budget and are projected to grow substantially.⁠10 It is the largest portion of federal spending outpacing both social security and the military.

The drivers of this are our nearly singular combination of unregulated profiteering industries and particularly pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, and a multi-layered mediating bureaucracy that introduces inefficiencies into an already top heavy industry. The American health crisis is deepening not only because of excessive bureaucracy introduced by the byzantine insurance system, but also due to its embrace of both protecting industry through strict intellectual property rights and placing barriers to any regulation of prices for pharmaceuticals and equipment. It’s worth noting that health insurance and hospitals themselves are barely profitable with the median around 3% which is near inflation levels only. The profit tends to go to all the feeder industries selling products used by patients and purchased by health institutions.⁠11 An Institute of Medicine report identified nearly 800 billion dollars in waste created by unnecessary services, excess administration, inefficient service delivery, overcharging, fraud, and failing to utilize potential preventative measures.⁠12

(Ross Clark. “The World Health Organization has lost all credibility.” The Spectator, 28 May 2022, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-world-health-organisation-has-lost-all-credibility/. Goa)

Let’s be honest: is there anyone out there who has faith in the ability of the World Health Organization (WHO) to tackle a future pandemic? Any lingering hope that the WHO might be an organization fit to be trusted with global heath concerns has pretty well evaporated with the election, by acclamation, of China as one of the 12 members of its executive board on Friday. It is true, of course, that an international body must have representation from all over the world if it is going to win the near-universal cooperation it needs in order to operate. It can’t be led entirely by western democracies and wealthy South Asian countries even if they might have the best skills available; you need members able to tap into every culture and religion on Earth. But ought we really be trusting leadership of the WHO to a government which is not merely a malignant dictatorship, accused of human rights abuses against its own citizens – but which has also obstructed an investigation into the high likelihood that it accidentally caused the last pandemic? The story of how Covid-19 began has been investigated very thoroughly in Alina Chan and Matt Ridley’s excellent book, Viral: the Search for the Origin of Covid-19. If no one has quite pegged down where the virus came from – and probably never will – there is at least a very strong case to answer that it originated in Chinese laboratory experiments aimed at researching how to tackle coronaviruses, and that it entered the population through a laboratory leak. It would hardly be unprecedented for a virus to leak from a laboratory in this way – even if it would make it way and above the world’s most expensive laboratory accident. Most popular Ed West The Windrush myth What has been China’s response to this possibility? To try to snuff out any investigation into the matter. Bizarrely, a WHO team allowed into China in early 2021, and chaperoned at every turn, tried to dismiss a lab leak, announcing that it would not investigate the matter any further. It isn’t just China whose presence on the WHO Executive Board will cause alarm. Also on the list is Brazil, whose own parliament has recommended criminal charges against the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, over his handling of the pandemic. Then there is Yemen, which is in the grip of civil war. The only European country on the WHO’s board is Slovakia, which hardly has the greatest political clout and which happens to have had one of the highest deaths rates from Covid-19 anywhere. If I were drawing up a list of 12 countries for the WHO’s executive board, based on their record during the pandemic, their ability to provide global leadership and on their longer record in public health, their political stability (while ensuring geographical spread), these are the ones which would make my fantasy WHO executive board: Germany The UK or France Norway, Denmark or Sweden The US Canada Japan South Korea Vietnam South Africa (for its excellent sequencing of variants) Senegal (has been praised for handling pandemic far better than other poor countries) Australia or New Zealand Chile Instead, this is the WHO’s list: Brazil Canada China Ethiopia Maldives Micronesia Morocco Moldova Senegal Slovakia USA Yemen In other words, America and Canada apart, it is stuffed with small countries, many with lousy human rights records, which will not dare to challenge China or which will not have the political clout to do so. The prospects for future pandemics do not look good.

“Traditional disease surveillance is done by health departments and will collect reports or notifications from hospitals, primary health care, and from laboratories,” explains Epiwatch’s founder, Raina MacIntyre. MacIntyre is also a public health physician and epidemiologist at UNSW Sydney. “By the time things land on the desk of a health department, usually the epidemic has already spread.”

Epidemic surveillance AI usually involves algorithms that mine through sources of data—news reports, social media posts, and flight data—that aren’t traditionally used in disease surveillance. AI models can automatically scour this data, looking for patterns and abnormalities that public health authorities might not otherwise be aware of. For example, Epiwatch uses an AI technology called natural language processing that scrapes the web for terminology that could be associated with the emergence of a new illness, like “syndrome” and “pneumonia.”

(Ping Xu, James C. Garand, Ling Zhu, October 14th, 2015, London School of Economics Blog, , goa)

The past three decades have seen a substantial rise in income inequality in the United States. Since the 1970s, the income gap between the rich and the poor has escalated rapidly and exceeded that of most other industrial democracies. Among the political and economic determinants of inequality, immigration has been one of the most controversial. Previously, economists have found that low-skill immigrants in developed countries tend to increase these countries’ low-skill labor supply and consequently increase wage inequality. Despite the evidence documented at the individual level, to date relatively little is known about whether or not and how immigration influences income inequality in the United States.

With the UK voting Leave in its EU referendum, European countries closing their borders to refugees, and certain high-profile Americans calling to build a wall between the US and Mexico, this year has marked a new era of immigration intolerance. Immigrants around the globe – more than 244 million of them in total – are often seen as nothing more than a burden or a threat, and are treated like a problem that needs to be fixed. With 65.3 million people forced to migrate as a result of conflict or persecution in 2015 alone, talk of refugees ‘flooding’ host countries has become commonplace, enabling fear and hostility among citizens. It’s fair to say the dialogue about immigration has become a bleak one. It is also safe to say that xenophobia, fear and emotive rhetoric have cast a shadow over immigration policies. It is not unknown to economists that there are vast economic benefits to be gained from the free movement of people: in a 2011 paper titled Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk? economist Michael Clemens argued that loosening immigration restrictions could double the global GDP average. Now, as the emotive arguments for tighter restrictions start to crack under close scrutiny, a combination of theory and data is providing further evidence for the case for open borders. How migration shaped the world With many countries experiencing a sudden influx of refugees, it’s hard not to see mass immigration as a new phenomenon – but that’s far from the case. Whether people have been seeking freedom from conflict, escaping poverty or even trying to find new economic opportunities and employment, migration has been a feature of human existence for centuries. Today, immigrants and foreign-born citizens make up an increasing percentage of every major city in the world. Loosening immigration restrictions could double the global GDP average Throughout world history, migration has made key contributions towards social, economic and cultural change: from the age of exploration to colonial migration, nations have always been quick to take advantage of the free movement of people. Right up until the First World War, there were virtually no controls restricting travel in Europe – people could move without passports and begin work without permits. Nations first began to exercise greater restrictions in the period between the two world wars; changes in immigration policies reflected a time of economic stagnation and a general climate of uncertainty and insecurity, causing international migration to significantly decline. Furthermore, economic and political instability sparked hostility and distrust towards migrants, setting a new tone for immigration policies. Legislation requiring tighter entry procedure controls was introduced, restricting employment possibilities for foreigners and introducing strict penalties against the employment of irregular migrants. But despite the hostile attitudes that lingered for some time, industrialised countries in western Europe eventually reverted back to more liberal immigration controls as a consequence of high demand in labour forces. Economic necessity trumped political anxiety, and directly recruiting foreign workers facilitated the countries’ way back to solid economic growth. Migrants’ impact on wages As history has a way of repeating itself, wealthy nations once again find themselves in a political standoff with immigration. The events of 9/11 and the ensuing ‘War on Terror’ ignited global fear and pushes for greater national security measures, while also serving as a catalyst for the emergence of heightened hostility and intolerance towards immigrants. General attitudes in certain host countries worsened as a result of the financial crisis in 2008: as unemployment increased, many natives felt they were in direct competition with migrants. Last year, destination countries struggled with the sudden influx of refugees. Although many of these nations approached the crisis by offering humanitarian aid, for some the situation was the final straw, and a wave of incensed xenophobia followed. 65.3m People migrated in 2015 2x Increase in the UK’s foreign-born population, 1993-2013 19% of the world’s foreign-born population lives in 20 major cities Whether they have come from outspoken political figures or the media at large, there are some critical go-to arguments people have consistently invoked in order to defend tighter immigration restrictions. We have witnessed these arguments influence widespread public opinion, from the Brexit campaign in the UK to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the US, but under closer scrutiny, these rationalisations lose a lot of their credibility. A supposed rise in unemployment – one of the more popular issues among anti-immigration parties – is often used as an argument to mobilise support, with the logic being that migrant workers will cause greater competition for jobs. Groups such as the Swiss People’s Party (SPP) are no strangers to this argument: even in a country where unemployment has reached a high of only 4.2 percent within the last 10 years, the party manages to exploit people’s fears of job loss. Although parties such as the SPP wrongfully utilise these fears to mobilise support, there’s no smoke without fire. In November 2015, the IMF reported that, based on past experience of the pace of immigration, the Swedish unemployment rate “could rise to about 8.5 percent by 2020”. It is important to acknowledge the possibility that immigration may affect unemployment in destination countries, but even if this is a possibility, many studies by economists – including Clemens’ – conclude there is not an evident correlation between immigration and unemployment. Economists even suggest the knock-on effect may actually be beneficial to the workforce of host countries: migrants increase labour, which brings in more profit, and in turn business owners can invest in more production. They are also able to diversify, creating opportunities for a broader range of workers. It has also become a popular belief that an increase in immigration will undermine native workers’ wages, forcing their pay down. This has definitely been a topic of contention in the wake of the Brexit vote: campaign figurehead and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage often warned that migrants undercut hard-working, low-paid British employees. In 2014, he said: “There is no question that it’s pushed wage inflation down.” And while charismatic political figures such as Farage often sound convincing when making these statements, the real question is whether a more scientific analysis can back up these claims. It’s widely believed there is some logic behind this argument; what is often debated is the extent. Nathan Smith, author of Principles of a Free Society, agreed the free movement of people “would reduce wages for some native workers”. However, he also argued skilled workers such as doctors, lawyers and teachers could expect to see their wages rise. Even those workers who can claim to be more skilled than the incoming migrants could potentially witness an increase in their wages – but, as Smith told World Finance, “many less skilled natives would probably see their wages fall”. However, the impact on wages may be far more anticlimactic than many anti-immigration advocates would care to admit. Research conducted by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford found that, in the UK labour force, immigration has a very small impact on average wages: the 2013 report found that, between 2000 and 2007, a one percent increase in the share of migrants in the UK’s working age population lowered the average wage by 0.3 percent. Further research conducted by Giovanni Peri of the University of California determined a small, negative impact by isolating the effects of immigration in Switzerland: he found that, while the Swiss workforce grew by four percent between 1999 and 2007, there were no changes in wages or employment for natives overall. During this period, wages increased slightly for more educated Swiss people, while some less educated citizens were displaced into different jobs. It is true there is potential for a slight decrease in wages for lower skilled workers, but the impact has often been exaggerated for popular appeal. Not only are the effects minimal and temporary, but if governments are managing immigration effectively, they should be able to offset these effects with policies such as higher taxation on migrants. Immigration controls Free movement almost exclusively benefits both recipient and sender countries, increasing as it does labour forces, productivity, and the money sent between the two The cause of crime During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump eloquently described the issue of immigration and crime thus: “They’re sending people that have problems, and they’re bringing those problems with [them]. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Immigrants in the US are much less likely to commit crimes, and are imprisoned less often than native-born Americans The many xenophobic phrases of Trump are often ridiculous and nonsensical, but views like these (although not so crudely articulated) are shared by many citizens within host countries. In Israel in 2012, waves of retaliatory violence followed claims African immigrants were responsible for 40 percent of crimes in Tel Aviv. Interior Minister Eli Yash insisted “most of the African[s] are criminals”, but official police data showed foreigners committed just 2.24 crimes per 100 people in 2011 – less than half the 4.99 figure for Israeli citizens. This is often the case: emotive speeches such as these are very rarely informative on migrant crime statistics, but are extremely successful in mobilising violence against foreigners. In 2013, Brian Bell, Associate at the London School of Economics, reported that, as a wave of asylum seekers entered the UK between 2002 and 2009, there was little to no change in violent crime. Asylum seekers were associated with a 1.1 percent increase in property crime, such as theft, which Bell argued was most likely a result of many not being allowed to work. As the Brexit campaign reached its xenophobic peak this year – which included the appearance of signs saying “Leave the EU, no more Polish vermin” – a wave of hate crimes and racial abuse was reported to have followed. Contrary to the violent crimes Donald Trump is convinced immigrants are the cause of, the Migration Observatory stated its US study found no evidence of a causal link between migrants and violent crime. It did find, however, that immigrants in the US are much less likely to commit crimes, and are imprisoned less often than native-born Americans. Doubling the world’s wealth While the evidence is lacking in anti-immigrant advocates’ argument that migrants flood across borders and become a burden on native taxpayers, there is significant evidence suggesting large-scale economic, political and societal benefits can be reaped from the movement of people. A combination of theory and data has provided a remarkable projection of what a global economy without borders would look like. According to estimates cited by Mark Wayne, Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, free labour mobility would increase world GDP somewhere in the range of 67-147 percent. In other words, the world’s $80trn economy could potentially double by opening borders. Clemens also presented data from various estimates insisting the elimination of migration barriers would bring gains of epic proportions – including the doubling of world GDP within approximately 23 years. Clemens’ research included a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation, which, while offering a more conservative estimate, still showed a plausible GDP gain of 20-60 percent. Clemens explained: “Divide the world into a ‘rich’ region, where one billion people earn $30,000 per year, and a ‘poor’ region, where six billion earn $5,000 per year. Suppose emigrants from the poor region have lower productivity, so each gains just 60 percent of the simple earnings gap upon emigrating – that is, $15,000 per year. This marginal gain shrinks as emigration proceeds, so suppose that the average gain is just $7,500 per year. If half the population of the poor region emigrates, migrants would gain $23trn – which is 38 percent of global GDP.” Smith, who also estimated a doubling of world GDP, suggested “opening borders would trigger migration of billions of people, developing countries would witness a massive exodus of population to rich countries”. The knock-on effect of this would be “the Dow Jones would soar, investors would thrive, landowners would also be enormously enriched”. Last year migrants sent home $440bn to developing countries – seven times more than global aid contributions Economists such as Smith have argued free movement of people almost exclusively benefits both the recipient and the originating countries. More migrants means larger labour forces, more production and higher consumer spending, all contributing to boosting markets and growing their economies4 As the global population continues to age, the opening of borders will become even more important to ensuring a strong labour supply. In 1950, there were only 14 million people living over the age of 80. Today there are 100 million, and the UN Population Division (UNPD) predicts there will be nearly 400 million by 2050. As fertility continues to fall below replacement levels in all regions except Africa, experts are predicting rapidly rising dependency ratios, while the OECD workforce is expected to drop from 800 million people to 600 million by 2050. Immigrants are therefore crucial to maintaining the size of a country’s labour force. The problem is particularly acute in North America, Europe and Japan. In a report titled Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Population?, the UNPD stated: “In the absence of migration, the declines in population size will be even greater than those projected and population ageing will be more rapid… If retirement ages remain essentially where they are today, increasing the size of the working population through international migration is the only option in the short to medium term to reduce declines in the potential support ratio.” An often-overlooked advantage of immigration is its ability to harvest innovation, trade and entrepreneurship. Immigrants bring with them new skills and knowledge, which allow native workers to specialise in what they do best. Immigrants may also create new economic opportunities and promote innovation: in most OECD countries, immigrants are more likely to start new businesses than natives. Alex McHugh, North American Communications Associate for Students for Liberty, said: “Immigrants tend to be great innovators, often drawing their experiences of uncertainty and risk to go after business ventures others wouldn’t consider.” A 2010 Conference Board of Canada (CBC) report titled Immigrants as Innovators: Boosting Canada’s Global Competitiveness measured how countries benefit from welcoming immigrants. It found 35 percent of Canada research chairs were foreign-born, and immigrants made up roughly 20 percent of the Canadian population. Overall, Canada is known for having embraced immigration, integrating it into its national identity. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the World Economic Forum at Davos 2016: “Diversity is the engine of investment. It generates creativity that enriches the world.” Based on a survey and a literature review, the CBC report concluded immigrants in Canada – as in many other receiving countries – are a source of diverse knowledge and experience that can increase innovation in businesses. Today’s liberal, international society has largely embraced the free movement of capital and trade. Now it’s time the global economy began to accept the free movement of people too. There is potential for a symbiotic relationship between these concepts, where the movement of people can substitute trade in labour-intensive countries, and vice versa. McHugh said: “The free movement of people should be as unrestricted as possible… Restricting the flow of goods, capital or people creates distortions to the market that can undermine economic productivity.” The concept of open borders is not dissimilar to free trade. There will always be a need for some level of restrictions – for national security reasons, for instance – but to completely disrupt the flow of migrants is harmful to both the global economy and the societies within it. Today, the obstacles to lifting immigration restrictions are, as Smith noted, “racism, bigotry and ignorance”. Tackling these could lead to significant global economic prosperity in the future.

Olugbenga Ajilore, “Economic Recovery and Business Dynamism in Rural America,” Center for American Progress, 20 February 2020, pp. 4-8, .

Small businesses, especially in the South as well as Rural Middle America, have been struggling to survive in the current economic environment, particularly due to the trends of consolidation and growing market concentration. This increasing concentration, especially in rural communities, has led to the rise of the modern company town, where a community is dominated by a single firm.9 In the agricultural sector, the number of federally inspected slaughterhouses declined 36 percent from 1990 to 2016.10 This rise in concentration has allowed these larger firms to exert market power on smaller firms and on their own employees—a trend that has been especially prevalent in the corn and soybean seed markets: The shares of the four largest firms in each of these two markets have risen to more than 85 percent and more than 76 percent, respectively.11 This increased concentration in rural communities may be a factor in limiting startup activity. The ACP classification system shows that not all rural communities have experienced negative firm growth: Graying America, Hispanic Centers, and Latter-day Saints Enclaves saw an increase in net establishment growth since the Great Recession, although this growth may not be evenly distributed within these communities. Figure 3 maps this trend to show which parts of the country are experiencing significant growth. It specifically maps establishment growth in the counties represented by Graying America, Hispanic Centers, and Latter-day Saints Enclaves. The counties highlighted in dark blue areas show large establishment growth. Many of these communities, especially among Graying America, are recreation-dependent. Research by Meghan Lawson for Headwaters Economics found that recreation counties attract new residents and are experiencing earnings growth.12 In the Hispanic Centers, on the other hand, several of the counties are mining-dependent, primarily in the oil and gas industry. Figure 3 illustrates that it is difficult to apply lessons learned and strategies used in the growing communities to other, more stagnant areas that are not rich in amenities or that lack abundant resources. Immigration can help spur growth in rural areas One lesson that may be applied to all rural communities is the importance of fostering population growth. Data from a 2019 CAP brief show that many nonmetro counties have been experiencing population loss,13 which an EIG report found has adverse impacts on housing markets, government finance, and business dynamism.14 On that last point, communities that are losing population see a decrease in the demand for goods and services and therefore experience greater firm deaths. Figure 4 shows that many of the nonmetro communities that have been experiencing population loss following the Great Recession are in the Southern and Midwestern regions. Many communities have tried to reverse the trend of depopulation through welcoming immigrants, a strategy that can be successful.15 Figure 5 confirms a positive relationship between the net international migration rate and population change over the post-Great Recession period. There are numerous examples of places throughout the country where immigrants have revitalized and benefited rural communities—not just in the agriculture sector but also in manufacturing, health care, tourism, and startups.16 Nebraska, for example, has seen a long influx of Mexican immigrants who are employed at Tyson meatpacking plant, thereby increasing the state’s population and in turn creating a demand for small businesses.17 Certain policies, such as the Heartland Visa, can encourage immigration targeted toward areas experiencing depopulation.18 Communities can also employ certain strategies to create social infrastructure to help immigrants thrive.19 For example, providing English as a second language (ESL) classes or other communication programs for migrants and their children to facilitate dialogue between new migrants and other community members is helpful. Conclusion Since the Great Recession, business growth nationwide has faltered relative to recoveries from previous recessions. Metropolitan counties have recovered in terms of establishment growth, but that recovery has been concentrated in the largest cities.20 In rural communities, the counties that had positive establishment growth were confined to recreation-dependent counties located in Florida and Texas and in the Central Valley of California, as well as communities rich in certain resources. Many rural communities are taking steps to support local businesses through community development corporations and cooperatives, but there may be a role at the federal level to expand the capacity of these organizations. Policymakers need to create a better climate for small businesses to thrive and grow. This is important for all regions but vital for rural communities, as they are also struggling with other problems—such as higher rates of opioid use,21 hospital closures,22 and job loss23—that harm their viability. Until there are efforts at all levels of government to foster small-business growth and rural entrepreneurship, these communities will continue to fall behind the rest of the country.

It has been almost two years since the onset of the COVID-19 and, in that time, an incredible amount of knowledge has been developed on the coronavirus. From vaccine production, to personal protection, to the spread of the disease, society has learned how to deal with this virus.

The development of heating, ventilation and air conditioning solutions could be compared to the development of vaccines. Just as pharmaceutical companies used existing and relatively new technologies to develop vaccines such as think vector vaccines and messenger RNA, the HVAC industry has used a similar strategy to battle COVID-19 like high-efficiency particulate air filters and ultraviolet germicidal irradiation.

COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2 that has affected millions of people worldwide. Although lacking in research clearly proving how the virus is transmitted and what parameters affect that, the most probable transmission modes currently identified are droplet and fomite transmission. Social distancing, personal protective equipment, quarantine and lockdown measures, have been identified as effective strategies to contain the transmission of the virus. However, growing evidence for airborne transmission has been observed, resulting in higher relevance for HVAC strategies in spaces with high occupancy and showing the importance of including the occupant's safety into the paradigm of future low-energy buildings and public transports.

Main established HVAC strategies to limit the spread of the COVID-19 in buildings and enclosed spaces include the increase of outdoor air and air change rates, the use of higher capacity filters, the use of UV light, etc. Although able to reduce airborne viral transmission, these strategies are responsible for an increase in energy consumption and a decrease in thermal comfort, making them not appealing as long-term strategies. In the view of identifying HVAC technologies able to provide a healthy environment for the occupants without affecting energy consumption, this paper demonstrated the potential of the liquid desiccant technology for use in crowded buildings (schools, gyms, libraries, etc.), enclosed spaces (elevators, locker rooms, etc.) and public transport, particularly for large scale buildings where large air change rates are supplied and humidity control and/or moisture removal is required. The technology could provide benefits in terms of (i) efficient use of energy such as low-grade heat sources, (ii) capacity to independently control temperature and humidity of the supply air, (iii) supply 100% outdoor air, (iv) control of humidity within the range of values less favourable to the growth, proliferation and infectivity of microorganisms (RH between 40% and 60%) and (v) virus inactivation characteristics of the desiccant solutions. The study showed how some conventional desiccant solutions, such as TEG and LiCl, have been largely studied due to their sanitising characteristics. The potential factors involved in the virus inactivation process performed by desiccant solutions (high temperature, increased salinity, effect of Li and Cl ions, exposure time, etc.) were suggested together with possible modifications of the solutions to enhance their sanitising characteristics. As a matter of fact, metal ions, such as titanium and copper oxide, could be added to conventional desiccant solutions with beneficial effects in terms of both increased heat and mass transfer and antimicrobial activity. The paper is the first step towards the development of a novel airborne pathogen scrubber system able to draw in the contaminated air, neutralise the airborne particles in the air (viruses, bacteria, fungi, particulates, etc.) thanks to the deactivation action of the liquid desiccant solution and push the sanitised air to the environment or recirculate it back to space.

True epidemic diseases are characterized by exponential growth. This means cases rise very rapidly over short periods of time, usually days or weeks.1 It is this exponential growth that causes health system surges and compromises critical infrastructure. An endemic disease does not have these features, and changes, if any, occur over longer periods of time, usually years. Pandemic planning has historically been based on influenza, with the assumption that the most likely pandemic will be one emerging from a zoonotic influenza virus to affect humans.1 The majority of investment in pandemic planning is around diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines. While essential, these typically are available late in the genesis of pandemics and after infections have spread widely. The economic cost of COVID-19 illustrates the devastation that pandemics can cause and the benefit of both early detection and prevention. The cost of the COVID-19 pandemic was estimated in 2020 alone to be more than $16 trillion, and it is estimated to have more than doubled since then.2

Vast, open-source data can provide intelligence and early warning for pandemics and epidemics at a time when they have not yet spread beyond national borders. Signals that are detected early enough can feasibly prevent a pandemic by allowing early identification of a small outbreak, which can then be contained through isolation, contact tracing, and quarantine. Traditional public health surveillance relies on data being reported from the health system or laboratories that is then validated to enable the monitoring of trends in infectious diseases. These data provide insights into trends over time, allow comparison between time periods, and can signal an unusual rise in a disease incidence. Trends can also help evaluate the success of public health interventions such as vaccination programs. Traditional surveillance is an essential public health tool, but it is substantially delayed and not timely enough to allow early detection of serious epidemics. Open-source rapid intelligence is not a replacement for traditional public health surveillance but an adjunct to enable early response and investigation of emerging outbreaks.