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(Warren, Fellow of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at The Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, , Fall)

MMT advocates reject the macro fine‐​tuning of traditional Keynesian analysis. They believe that government should be directly involved continuously over the cycle, by putting in place structural macroeconomic programs that directly manage the labor force, pricing mechanisms, and investment projects, and constantly monitoring financial developments… . But MMT goes beyond full employment policy as it also promotes capital controls for open economies, credit controls, and socialization of investment. Wage rates and interest rate management are also important [Tymoigne and Wray 2013: 44–45]. No wonder Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio‐​Cortez (D-NY) likes MMT. For all of its fascination with how money is produced (via government spending and bank lending), the programs favored by MMT, such as government guaranteed employment, must be evaluated on their merits in the traditional way. As an aside, I see many potential problems with a government guarantee of employment and would prefer a guaranteed minimum income, which would provide a comprehensive safety net and leave job and other choices to individuals rather than to government administrators of a jobs program. MMT attempts, unsuccessfully in my opinion, to repackage and resurrect the empirically and theoretically discredited Keynesian policies of the 1960s and 70s. A 2019 survey of leading economists showed a unanimous rejection of MMT’s assertions that (1) “Countries that borrow in their own currency should not worry about government deficits because they can always create money to finance their debt,” and (2) “Countries that borrow in their own currency can finance as much real government spending as they want by creating money” (Chicago Booth 2019). MMT is an effort to justify more government spending on programs favored by AOC and her friends with claims of fiscal space that can be liberated by printing money. Its arguments do not add up (Palley 2019). Both the excitement and motivation for MMT seem to reflect the desire to promote a political agenda, without the hard analysis of its pros and cons — its costs and benefits.

(Doug, , 2-21)

That brings us to the next problem: inflation. When the printing presses run freely, it’s not only reactionaries who think that runs the risk of spiraling prices. As I was researching this piece, many people to whom I described MMT, from Democrats to Marxists, brought it up as a worry. MMTers are coy about the topic — they never say how much is too much, and they profess great confidence in their ability to control it. In a paper criticizing MMT, the left-Keynesian economist Thomas Palley says he’s heard a “leading” MMTer say inflation less than 40 percent is “costless.” That’s nearly three times the modern US record of just under 15 percent in 1980, which was widely regarded, and not just by bondholders, as a crisis. Since wages typically lag behind price changes, inflations can lead to real declines in living standards. Though it might scandalize some liberals to say so, it’s dangerous to be sanguine about inflation. People find it destabilizing and it feeds a hunger for order. The rise in inflation through the 1970s that climaxed in that 15 percent record helped grease the way for Reagan. The extreme inflation of Weimar Germany in the 1920s contributed to the rise of Hitler. As a British diplomat stationed at the embassy in Berlin wrote to his bosses at home during the hyperinflation: “The population is ripe to accept any system of firmness or for any man who appears to know what he wants and issues commands in a loud, bold voice.” The standard view of the Weimer inflation is that the German economy, severely damaged by World War I and forced to make huge reparations payments to the victors, wasn’t up to the task — it just didn’t have the productive capacity, and its citizens were both unwilling and unable to pay the necessary taxes. So instead the government just printed money and spent it, not only to pay its own bills, but to support bank lending to the private sector. (The printing presses were so overworked that they had trouble keeping up with the demand for fresh banknotes. At least keystroke money wouldn’t face this problem.) Inflation peaked at 29,500 percent in October 1923, meaning that prices doubled every four days. The value of the mark collapsed from 320 per US dollar in early 1922 to over 4 trillion per dollar in late 1923, meaning the mark lost 99.999999992 percent of its value in a year and a half. The value of the real wage, if it’s possible to measure amid such rapid inflation, fell by over 80 percent, as pay badly lagged price increases. In When Money Dies, a classic popular history of the Weimar inflation, Adam Fergusson wrote that the savaging of living standards brought “hunger, disease, destitution and sometimes death” to the mass of Germans. Hyperinflation was only stopped with a deep austerity program — government spending cuts, layoffs, wage cuts, the usual. Tax payments were linked to gold values, not the worthless notes from the printing press. Unemployment soared. But the inflation ended.

(Leslie, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/readers-react-to-the-editorial-boards-green-new-deal/2019/02/28/9f72a302-3b77-11e9-a06c-3ec8ed509d15_story.html , 2-28)

Seriously? The plan to use fracked gas, laid out in the editorial board’s vision, is a better plan than the Green New Deal? The huge ships are still coming in, docking a mile offshore, and fracked gas is piped into the holding tanks. Let’s not forget one of the starting points, the fracking wells in Pennsylvania, which will turn huge tracts of fertile farmland into poisoned wasteland where — who knew? — people actually live. The wells are poisoned from fracking contamination, the air is nauseating, and the massive trucks move in and out, bringing ruin and irreversible damage to land and lives. The toxic fracked gas gets piped through our communities, passing through massive compressor stations, showering local residents with tons of toxic emissions and unrelenting noise. Its final destination is Cove Point, where it is refined — call it what it is, the plant is a fracked gas refinery — spewing more than 20 tons of carcinogenic chemicals into the air, land and Chesapeake Bay per year. The plant guzzles fresh water from our aquifer at a rate of 250,000 to 350,000 gallons per day and is voiding its wastewater — 149,000 gallons per day — into a creek that feeds into the local marshes that kiss the bay. Happy thoughts when you feast on crabs, oysters, rockfish and bluefish in the coming summers, presuming they, and we, survive the onslaught.

(Nicole, fossil fuels program manager for Friends of the Earth. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/readers-react-to-the-editorial-boards-green-new-deal/2019/02/28/9f72a302-3b77-11e9-a06c-3ec8ed509d15_story.html , 2-28)

The Post’s editorials have supported the same moderate approach to climate change for a decade. But a decade of mild solutions hasn’t gotten us anywhere, and in that time the climate crisis has grown only more urgent. We now have the political momentum to push for legislation that could stop the worst of the climate crisis. Genuflecting to moderation for the sake of moderation — or worse, to placate the fossil-fuel industry and the politicians it funds — won’t help front-line communities already feeling the effects of climate change. There is simply no way to pull us back from the brink if we don’t end subsidies, halt all extraction and stop building new infrastructure for fossil fuels. And nuclear energy, a failed and dangerous experiment that has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, has no place in our clean-energy future. The exploitation of workers, communities and our natural resources are driven by a system that prioritizes polluter profits over people. To fight climate change, we must remake the system that fosters social inequities. A radical Green New Deal — one founded on a just transition for workers and communities that ends use of fossil fuels and nuclear power — is exactly what we need. The same moderate, weaker plans we’ve seen for a decade distract us from the bold solutions we need.

(Michael, Director@ChesapeakeClimateActionNetwork, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/readers-react-to-the-editorial-boards-green-new-deal/2019/02/28/9f72a302-3b77-11e9-a06c-3ec8ed509d15_story.html , 2-28)

The Feb. 24 editorial “Want a Green New Deal? Here’s a better one.” made good points about the power of market forces to help solve the climate crisis. But it endorsed the wide use of a particular fossil fuel — fracked natural gas — that scientists say could help doom the planet. The editorial said natural gas is “far less damaging” than coal. But the editorial linked to a Union of Concerned Scientists memo that includes a rebuttal of this argument. Greenhouse-gas benefits, it turns out, depend on the life-cycle leakage rate of the methane being drilled and compressed and piped to market. Those leakage rates in the United States can be as high as a catastrophic 9 percent of the total gas exploited, according to UCS. Indeed, using publicly available data from sources ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Energy Department to local utility Dominion Energy shows that fracked gas is as bad — if not worse — for the climate as coal. Or, as one Cornell University scientist has famously said, fracked gas is not a “bridge fuel” to a clean energy future. It’s a “gangplank” to a climate calamity.

(Science Daily, 2/7/2018, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180207140349.htm, JLM)

Removing fossil fuel subsidies would have only a small effect on CO2 emissions and renewable energy use, new research has shown. The largest emissions savings would be in oil and gas exporting countries, where fewer poor people would be affected, and subsidy removal can be aided by currently low oil prices. Fossil fuel subsidies amount to hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide, and removing them has been held up as a key answer to climate change mitigation. Unfortunately it is not the silver bullet many had hoped, IIASA-led analysis published in the journal Nature shows. Removing fossil subsidies would only slightly slow the growth of CO2 emissions, with the result that by 2030 they would only be 1-5% lower than if subsidies had been maintained, regardless of whether oil prices are low or high. This equates to 0.5-2 gigatonnes (Gt/year) of CO2 by 2030, significantly less than the voluntary climate pledges made under the Paris climate agreement, which add up to 4-8 Gt/year and are themselves not enough to limit warming to 2°C. "The reason for this small overall effect is two-fold," says IIASA researcher Jessica Jewell, lead author on the paper. "First, these subsidies generally apply only to oil, gas, and electricity. That means that in some cases the removal of subsidies causes a switch to more emissions-intensive coal. Second, while these subsidies add up to substantial sums of money, the rate per unit of energy is not high enough to have a big effect on global energy demand, which would decrease by only 1-7% after subsidies are removed." In addition, subsidy removal would not boost renewable energy use significantly, the team found. This is because it is generally cheaper to reduce energy demand than to substitute subsidized fuels with renewables. Although the global effect on emissions is low, the impact varies between regions. The largest effects of removing subsidies were found in areas that export oil and gas, such as Russia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa. In these regions, the emissions savings caused by subsidy removal would either equal or exceed their climate pledges. Developing economies which are not major oil and gas exporters would generally experience much smaller effects of removing the subsidies. Some of the models used even suggested a rise in emissions for some regions, such as Africa and India, as a result of switching from unsubsidized oil and gas to coal. Subsidy removal and the poor The regional differences highlight one very important aspect of subsidy removal that needs to be taken into consideration: the impacts on the poor. Many fossil fuel subsidies were put in place to help those with lower income, and despite the fact that most of the money goes to the rich, the poorer you are, the more of your household budget comes from these subsidies, so their removal would have a much larger impact on daily life. For instance, removing subsidies means that the switch to modern fuels may become out of reach for many poor people, the results show. As a consequence they are stuck using firewood or charcoal, which both emit more greenhouse gases and are damaging to health. Fortunately, the highest numbers of poor people are concentrated in the regions where removal of subsidies will have the weakest effect on CO2 emissions. Removing subsidies in richer oil and gas exporting regions would therefore provide significantly greater emissions savings and have a less detrimental impact on the poor. This is facilitated by today's low oil prices. "The governments of oil and gas producing countries are already under pressure to reduce spending on subsidies as revenues shrink," says Jewell. "This provides a unique political opportunity to remove subsidies in countries where it will have the largest effect on emissions and the smallest impact on the poor." Ultimately, these results do show benefits of removing fossil fuel subsidies, especially in certain regions, but care is needed for implementation. "We're not saying: don't get rid of subsidies, we're saying that we need to be aware that it might have less of an effect than hoped, and it could have a disproportionally large effect on the poor," says Keywan Riahi, study co-author and IIASA Energy Program director. "But well-designed policies can achieve subsidy removal without affecting the poor. A scheme being trialed in India, for example, removed subsidies on cooking gas in general but continues to support the poorest households through rebates."

(Jessica Jewell1,2 , David McCollum1,3, Johannes Emmerling4,5, Christoph Bertram6, David E. H. J. Gernaat7,8, Volker Krey1 , Leonidas Paroussos9, Loïc Berger4,5,10, Kostas Fragkiadakis9, Ilkka Keppo11, Nawfal Saadi11, Massimo Tavoni4,5,12, Detlef van Vuuren7,8, Vadim Vinichenko13 & Keywan Riahi1,14 1Energy Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, 2361 Laxenburg, Austria. 2Centre for Climate and Energy Transformations and Department of Geography, University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway. 3Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, USA. 4Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, 20123 Milan, Italy. 5Centro Euromediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, 73100 Lecce, Italy. 6Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Member of the Leibniz Association, PO Box 60 12 03, D-14473 Potsdam, Germany. 7Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development, University of Utrecht, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands. 8PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, The Hague, The Netherlands. 9School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Electric Power, National Technical University of Athens, 15773 Athens, Greece. 10Department of Economics and Quantitative Methods, IESEG School of Management (LEM-CNRS), 59000 Lille, France. 11UCL Energy Institute, University College London, London WC1H 0NN, UK. 12Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, 20156 Milan, Italy. 13Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University, 1051 Budapest, Hungary. 14Institute of Thermal Engineering, Graz University of Technology, 8010 Graz, Austria Limited emission reductions from fuel subsidy removal except in energy-exporting regions

Limited emission reductions from fuel subsidy removal except in energy-exporting regions doi:10.1038/nature25467)

(Max B. Sawicky is an economist and writer in the wilds of Virginia. He has worked at the Government Accountability Office and the Economic Policy Institute. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/05/bernie-gets-socialistic)

From the Left, one baffling criticism comes from my notorious friend Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Institute, who characterizes a job guarantee — and by implication public employment in general — as workfare, or in more arcane terms, “unemployment benefits with an activation requirement.” Workfare, unemployment insurance, and public assistance programs are all designed to encourage beneficiaries to find private-sector work by making participation less appealing than a real job. The presumption that a job guarantee would be like workfare — despite the fact that the current proposals call for decently paid, full-time work with benefits — implies a certain expectation of the political environment in which the guarantee would be implemented. The degree of political clairvoyance implied here is unpersuasive. Perhaps just as important is the social connotation of steady work, as opposed to the stigmatized status of unemployment and especially welfare-identified workfare.In much of the intra-left debate, job guarantee proposals are pitted against the idea of a Universal Basic Income. But this issue hinges on what type of UBI one has in mind. Although UBI advocates tend to be indiscriminate in defining exactly what it would be, the original notion was a replay of the old idea of a “demogrant,” wherein every person fitting a broad category (e.g., citizens over age sixteen) would receive a fixed, unconditional cash transfer.

(Kali, Leader@CooperationJackson, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/kali-akuno-interview-climate-change-cooperation-jackson. 2-15)

You’ve been very lucid on the problem of productivism that’s implicit in a lot of Green New Deal proposals. One way some of us have tried to address this issue is by emphasizing other kinds of work, like care work. Another idea out there is to transition huge amounts of the workforce toward part-time work — that is, to distribute existing work more evenly. What are some of the ways you think we should finesse a jobs guarantee to avoid reproducing capitalist and/or socialist productivist politics? KA The Left has to start positioning itself around improving the overall quality of life of the working class, the oppressed, and humanity as a whole. A broader distribution of work is a necessary step in this direction without question, and it’s not only the right direction, but the imperative one. However, this has to be combined with forms of solidarity exchange to improve the quality of life of the majority of humanity. This is where things like time-banking on a mass scale can and should come in. As well as the overall expansion of the commons. To my mind, this will also entail transitional measures, such as a universal basic income (UBI). I say transitional because instituting a UBI without socializing the means of production would only serve to reproduce the capitalist logic of accumulation and the unequal relationships that are necessary for its reproduction. Ultimately, I think we are going to have to develop a comprehensive and democratic planning system that equitably distributes the essential goods and services we all need to survive and thrive. And to be clear, I’m not arguing for a return to the centralized state-capitalist economies of the twentieth century, but the democratic socialization of the emergent information-based exchange economies, and that would utilize technological innovations to create a regenerative economy.

(Denise, , 7-6)

Fossil fuel advocates are criticizing Pope Francis' recent climate encyclical, claiming his call to phase out fossil fuels will harm the poor by preventing access to electricity and keeping them in “energy poverty.” But fossil fuels are not economically viable in most of the communities that suffer from a lack of electricity, and on-the-ground experts have explained that distributed renewable energy sources are often a more effective way to lift the world's impoverished -- who will be most affected by the adverse impacts of climate change -- out of energy poverty. Arch Coal Lobbyist Provided Talking Points To Use Against Pope, Touting “Energy Poverty” Meme. In advance of Pope Francis' landmark encyclical calling for action on climate change, Arch Coal lobbyist Tom Altmeyer sent an email blast with talking points to use against the pope, including that the encyclical does not “address the tragedy of global energy poverty.” The Guardian reported that in the email, Altmeyer argued that the pope “should be promoting fossil fuels if he really cared about social justice” : “Unfortunately, the Pope's Encyclical, to be officiallt released on 6.18. does not apperar to address the tragedy of global energy poverty - see realities below [sic]” . In the email, Altmeyer argued the pope should be promoting fossil fuels if he really cared about social justice. “Industry, policymakers and social leaders - like Pope Francis - must work together to support policies that bring about new advances in fossil energy technologies so we can strike a balance between global economic needs and climate concerns,” the email said. [The Guardian, 6/17/15] Mainstream Publications Quoted Anti-Environment Group Pushing Energy Poverty Argument. The New York Times, E&E Publishing, and the National Catholic Reporter all published quotes from the anti-environment group Cornwall Alliance's spokesman E. Calvin Beisner, who claimed renewable energy would further impoverish individuals, in their coverage of the pope's climate encyclical:The New York Times reported: "'The policies meant to mitigate global warming would oppress the poor by depriving them of the energy without which they cannot rise out of poverty,' E. Calvin Beisner, a leader of an American group called the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, declared this year in Rome at a symposium held to pre-emptively counter Francis' message." [The New York Times, 6/21/15] National Catholic Reporter reported: “The policies Francis recommends would make it more difficult to overcome poverty, [Beisner] said. 'Ironically, by prolonging and even spreading poverty, those policies would put more of the natural environment at risk...Wealth enables people to afford better environmental stewardship,' Beisner said.” [National Catholic Reporter, 6/18/15] E&E Publishing reported: "'By prolonging and even spreading poverty, those policies would put more of the natural environment at risk,' said Calvin Beisner, founder of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation ... 'Pope Francis should champion economic development as a solution both to poverty and to environmental degradation.'" [E&E Publishing, 6/18/15]

(Clean Power Professionals Group, , 5-20)

Enbidge informs us that the International Energy Agency on Energy Access defines energy poverty as lacking access to electricity and clean cooking areas because of a lack of modern energy and it is estimated that over a billion people worldwide suffer from this problem. Energy poverty might be a direct result of the situation in developing countries regarding the establishment and maintenance of a reliable electrical grid. Renewables provide an excellent alternative for developing nations. As The Environmental Protection Agency mentions, centralized power generation tends to be the most economical and efficient system for providers to get the most value out of their money. However, the biggest problems with centralized generation come from their impact on the environment. Natural generation methods tend to impact the environment a lot less and could help developing countries meet their goals regarding pollution more effectively. The Failure of Centralized Electricity Distribution While it is more efficient to produce electricity from a centralized source, the fact remains that this system is less-than-perfect for developing countries that have a vast area to cover. As the volume of infrastructure required goes up, the amount of customers necessary to recoup that cost also needs to grow. However, in places like sub-Saharan Africa, there isn't the amount of population density essential to interest centralized providers into offering their services out in rural districts. The other obvious alternative is the development of a distributed grid, which has the added power of giving people back control over their electricity generation and distribution. Micro-Grids and the Growth of Independent Electricity There has been a push towards the implementation of smart micro-grids in some parts of the world to meet energy demand and push back the wave of energy poverty around the globe. However, these systems are finding it hard to get a foothold in some areas. As Energy Post notes, a micro-grid company aiming to deliver affordable electricity to Indian villages that had no electricity supply was met with massive resistance, deploying only ten units despite pitching 176 communities on the project. It was found that most villages didn't see micro-grids as 'real power' and instead decided to stick with governmental promises for centralized distribution. In many cases, these political promises never materialize, but villages still put their hope in their elected officials. Why Renewables Are Better for Developing Countries JOI Scientific notes that renewables and natural energy generation provide essential advantages to compete against traditional fossil fuel generation, including cost reduction, policy innovation, investment, and deployment. Developing nations that invest in this type of energy have the potential for growing their energy sector massively and can quickly obtain aid from the World Bank or other developing nations to fund their growth and development. The issues that these countries usually have is changing over from a fossil fuel based energy generation system to one that utilizes natural energy generation in the form of solar or wind power. The transition is a slow process, too gradual for some investors to consider. The cost of smaller grid systems might be perfect for addressing this shortcoming. Micro-Grids in Practical Application Smaller developing countries can benefit significantly from the implementation of micro-generation systems to distribute energy over a small geographic area. The limitations of alternative energy sources to provide vast amounts of energy for urban areas wouldn't be a factor in these villages because of the scaled down size of the distribution. The costs for implementation can be similarly scaled down. Eventually, once a sustainable and reliable electricity distribution is developed, the village can consider linking their grid to the national network or even helping to supply neighboring communities with each town providing the cost. In such a way, these isolated settlements help each other grow with the energy they harness.

(Brad, Climate activist/author, , 3-3)

To match a WWII-level mobilization today, US federal spending would reach somewhere between $30 trillion to $80 trillion a year. The nation’s mobilization for World War II saw federal spending grow from 10 percent of GDP (which represented a doubling from pre-Great Depression spending) to over 40 percent by 1945, vastly higher than federal outlays since. Source: FRED Economic Data, Federal Spending as Percent of GDP. One of the most common attacks against any kind of federal investment in the health of its citizenry is the specter of “soaring deficits.” Again, if we look to the highly successful example of the New Deal and World War II, we can see that we have little to worry about. (There’s also the point that budgetary deficits are meaningless when the alternative to spending is extinction.) The federal deficit reached 25 percent of GDP at the peak of the WWII-spending boom, vastly higher than today’s deficits. Source: FRED Economic Data, Federal Surplus as Percent of GDP. Note: As total US GDP grew dramatically thanks to the war mobilization, US federal spending increased not four-fold from 1940 to 1945 but seven-fold. The spending ramp-up from the start of the Great Depression to the peak of WWII mobilization is much more dramatic — a twenty-fold increase. That previously unprecedented spending is better understood as investment — the US economy tripled in size from 1929 to 1959. As economic analyst Kimberly Amadeo summarizes, “the New Deal worked.” Remarkably, the US’ historically high percentage of federal spending during World War II would put it at the low end of present-day spending in Europe: Source: OECD Data, general government spending. Following World War II, federal government spending has remained stable at about 20 percent of GDP. (The 2009 stimulus very briefly increased spending to 25 percent of GDP.) The US federal budget is currently about $4 trillion a year. If the federal government increased investment by seven to twenty times — paralleling the ramp-up that got the world out of the Great Depression, beat the Nazis, and made the United States the undisputed superpower of the free world — we would see an annual federal budget of about $30 trillion to $80 trillion a year. We can end global warming pollution and build a just, green economy in ten years with a budget of $50 trillion a year.

(Will, Chemistry@Australian National, Johan Rockström, View ORCID ProfileKatherine Richardson, Timothy M. Lenton, Carl Folke, Diana Liverman, Colin P. Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Sarah E. Cornell, View ORCID ProfileMichel Crucifix, Jonathan F. Donges, Ingo Fetzer, Steven J. Lade, Marten Scheffer, Ricarda Winkelmann, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, PNAS August 14, 2018 115 (33) 8252-8259; https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252)

What Is at Stake? Hothouse Earth is likely to be uncontrollable and dangerous to many, particularly if we transition into it in only a century or two, and it poses severe risks for health, economies, political stability (12, 39, 49, 50) (especially for the most climate vulnerable), and ultimately, the habitability of the planet for humans. Insights into the risks posed by the rapid climatic changes emerging in the Anthropocene can be obtained not only from contemporary observations (51⇓⇓⇓–55) but also, from interactions in the past between human societies and regional and seasonal hydroclimate variability. This variability was often much more pronounced than global, longer-term Holocene variability (SI Appendix). Agricultural production and water supplies are especially vulnerable to changes in the hydroclimate, leading to hot/dry or cool/wet extremes. Societal declines, collapses, migrations/resettlements, reorganizations, and cultural changes were often associated with severe regional droughts and with the global megadrought at 4.2–3.9 thousand years before present, all occurring within the relative stability of the narrow global Holocene temperature range of approximately ±1 °C (56). SI Appendix, Table S4 summarizes biomes and regional biosphere–physical climate subsystems critical for human wellbeing and the resultant risks if the Earth System follows a Hothouse Earth pathway. While most of these biomes or regional systems may be retained in a Stabilized Earth pathway, most or all of them would likely be substantially changed or degraded in a Hothouse Earth pathway, with serious challenges for the viability of human societies. For example, agricultural systems are particularly vulnerable, because they are spatially organized around the relatively stable Holocene patterns of terrestrial primary productivity, which depend on a well-established and predictable spatial distribution of temperature and precipitation in relation to the location of fertile soils as well as on a particular atmospheric CO2 concentration. Current understanding suggests that, while a Stabilized Earth pathway could result in an approximate balance between increases and decreases in regional production as human systems adapt, a Hothouse Earth trajectory will likely exceed the limits of adaptation and result in a substantial overall decrease in agricultural production, increased prices, and even more disparity between wealthy and poor countries (57). The world’s coastal zones, especially low-lying deltas and the adjacent coastal seas and ecosystems, are particularly important for human wellbeing. These areas are home to much of the world’s population, most of the emerging megacities, and a significant amount of infrastructure vital for both national economies and international trade. A Hothouse Earth trajectory would almost certainly flood deltaic environments, increase the risk of damage from coastal storms, and eliminate coral reefs (and all of the benefits that they provide for societies) by the end of this century or earlier (58).

(Michael, Economics@Bemidji, Mathew, Economics@UMKC, Introduction In Full Employment and Social Justice: Solidarity and Sustainability ed. Murray and Forstater, )

The Job Guarantee also has the potential to increase worker productivity, especially when complemented with an education and training component. Increasing innovation in technology that structurally changes the way we live, work, and play fuel the global twenty-first-century economy. This model of creative destruction requires a robust model of education and training, one that is responsive to the changing needs of regional markets and national economies (Wisman and Reksten 2013). Through education and training, the Job Guarantee sector can take the lead in developing and investing in alternative green technologies. The public sector is the only economic sector that has the means to invest in alternative technologies; because unlike private businesses, it can divorce itself from the profit motive. Many existing federally financed goods and services are not economically profitable, but societies decide that they serve a larger social benefit; current examples include government investment in mass transit, national parks, and the investment in public education, to name just a few. In a similar vein, part of the education and training component can be orientated toward these and similar welfare-enhancing programs. Specifically, federal governments can use the Job Guarantee program as a means to seriously address the dual problems of ever increasing natural resource use and climate change through the teaching and adoption of a “green economic” system of development alongside traditional workforce development programs.(4)

(John T., Economics@TexasChristian, https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2020/12/03/the-prerequisite-for-healing-the-nation-a-federal-job-guarantee/?sh=4df22c7134df , 12-3-)

This is normally the time of month when I post commentary about the latest economic data, particularly the Employment Situation Report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (speaking of which, unemployment inched down again, however less than expected). But I’m not sure that’s very important right now. We all know what’s happening: at the beginning of the year, the measures required to stem the tide of COVID infections caused post-World War Two highs in unemployment. As restrictions were eased, so unemployment fell. However, the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere are already bringing on new challenges and things may well get worse before they get better. But get better they will, it appears, as vaccines are starting to become available at this very moment. While this is all very serious and newsworthy, there’s no mystery here that requires an economist’s perspective to unravel. I therefore decided to shift gears this month and talk about a broader issue, one that existed well before COVID and which has contributed materially to the deep political divisions in American today: the increasing income inequality that has marked the US economy since the 1970s. While I normally avoid taking sides and instead focus on laying out the cause-and-effect of economic forces (I’m going to tell you how the car works, but where you drive it is up to you), this time I can’t do that and still make my point. So here is my stance: those who believe that there was massive election fraud, that science is left-wing propaganda, that the Democratic Party is full of socialists and pedophiles, and that wearing a mask is an unconstitutional infringement of their personal freedom (and a stepping stone toward requiring all American women wear veils—yes, I have heard that)–they’re wrong. More than wrong, they’re dangerous. Their views are undermining the very soul of US democracy. It has to stop. How did this situation evolve? Obviously, something this deep-seated and complex is not monocausal. A lot is going to have to happen to fix it because a lot happened to cause it. But I am prepared to argue that there is a necessary prerequisite to getting us back on the road to civility and respect for logic and evidence: reversing the above-mentioned trend of increasing economic inequality. Until all Americans feel safe, secure, and part of a system that works for them, Joe Biden can preach unity until he’s blue in the face and it will make no difference. The effects of unemployment, poverty, and income inequality are widespread and pernicious. Studies link them to increased rates of suicide, mental health issues, drug and alcohol use, spouse and child abuse , and even violent extremism. Victims tend to blame themselves, as does the rest of society. This can put people into a downward spiral that leads to precisely the kind of anger, conspiracy-theorizing, and scapegoating we see today. Again, I don’t mean to suggest that this is the only factor involved. The specifics of how these maladies manifest themselves is a function of the society in question and the historical context. I am also not saying that it is only the poor and disenfranchised who believe that there was mass voter fraud, etc., nor that they are all of the same mind. Taking Weimar Germany as an example of a polarized society—where demonstrations and street fighting had been going on since shortly after the end of World War One—not only did those most affected by the economic collapse vote both both Nazi and Communist, but they were joined by some wealthy and middle class voters as well, whose anxiety was linked not to their immediate fortunes but to their fears for Germany’s future. One can see parallels today. Perhaps the key takeaway from the scholarly literature regarding what happened in Germany is this: “the elections that put Adolf Hitler in power are subject to the same ordinary voting behavior explanations as are most other democratic elections worldwide...if we are interested in the likely reactions of voters and parties, we may want to focus more on governmental successes and failures in choosing and implementing public policies than on the degree of intellectual versus demagogic appeals of the candidates.” In other words, dismal conditions are far more important to creating extreme outcomes than the nature of the candidate’s message because socio-economic conditions drive the attractiveness of a candidate’s platform. Hitler’s speeches would have fallen on deaf ears in a Germany that boasted low rates of unemployment and high levels of income. Hence my thesis that reconciliation in America can only take place if we can return to a more inclusive and prosperous economic landscape. How do we achieve this? The core of any successful plan must include a government job guarantee, a promise to American citizens that if you want to work but can’t find a job, you can always find employment in the public sector. If that sounds like FDR’s New Deal, there’s a good reason for that: it’s very much like it, except on a much larger and permanent basis. There is absolutely no reason to expect the private sector to provide employment for every willing worker. To business, labor is a cost to be minimized. Fair enough, it’s not their responsibility to reduce unemployment and it is by this process (given several other caveats) that they are able to offer products with low prices. But, add to this the employment-reducing forces of automation (which has apparently accelerated during our current crisis) and the outsourcing of production and it’s little wonder that we have seen a diminishing middle class and increasing rural poverty. However these are not by any means insurmountable obstacles. We have, after all, plenty of food, shelter, clothing, and more for all Americans. That’s not the issue nor has it been for decades. The problem is jobs, or the means of securing the income necessary to take your share of the food, shelter, and clothing off the shelf. That problem can be solved with a job guarantee and here is what we have to do to make it happen: STEP ONE: Stop confusing the market with the economy. The former is only part of the latter, albeit a very large one in our society. However, even in our own recent history we have shifted gears very rapidly toward public sector, non-market solutions when we thought it necessary. In 1941, unemployment was still almost 10% (it had been 14.6% in 1940). By 1943, however, it was 1.9% and it fell to 1.2% the next year. What was responsible for this remarkable turnaround? The fact that after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the US started a massive government jobs program called World War Two. The magnitude of this reversal of economic fortunes was staggering and while there was rationing, this had to do with the fact that strategic materials were being diverted to the war effort. Without that, if the economy had been geared toward increasing the well being of domestic citizens, then there would, indeed, have been a chicken in every pot. And note that this isn’t promising people the moon or something for nothing, it’s guaranteeing them a share of the output we could already have produced for them but they could not afford. Now they can. STEP TWO: Recognize economic and social problems as no less significant than war. Unfortunately, it appears that we, as a society, are only willing to employ our economic resources in the manner suggested above when there is a war. That we will not do so in response to social or economic calamity is a tragedy and a source of shame. No one asked, “Can we afford it?” after Pearl Harbor; instead, they thought, “How can we afford not to?” As we saw just this fall, however, that has most certainly not been the case in response to the massive economic disaster caused by coronavirus. All this despite the fact that the US cannot possibly be forced to default on debt in its own currency. STEP THREE: Change our definition of a “job.” While there are exceptions, there seems to be a default understanding of “job” as being something that makes a profit for someone; or, at the very least, there is an implication that private-sector jobs represent the most worthwhile undertakings. We need to rid ourselves of that notion. There are separate, distinct, and complementary roles for the private and public sectors and each has a key role. The private sector should do things that are profitable, regardless of the social benefit, while the public sector should do things that are of social benefit, but unprofitable. Profit-derived jobs are not inherently better or more difficult or more praiseworthy than those that are not. Indeed, were we to rely exclusively on the profit motive, we’d leave undone things like national defense, educating the poor, caring for the infirm, combating climate change, police and fire protection, lawmaking, disaster response, etc, etc. And yet these are essential for a civilized society and they underpin our ability to actually carry out the market jobs. And they are what the job guarantee would create. Furthermore, we need to reconsider what a job is. If you stay at home to care for your children, are you creating a burden on society or contributing to it? Likewise for those caring for sick or elderly relatives. To reiterate a point made above, we have the ability to make food, shelter, clothing, and more for everyone. A job guarantee makes sure they get their share and that we are able to address social problems that the market ignores.

(Robert Freeman is the author of The Best One Hour History series which includes World War I, The InterWar Years, The Cold War, and other titles. He is the founder of The Global Uplift Project which builds small-scale infrastructure projects in the developing world to improve humanity’s capacity for self-development. http://redgreenandblue.org/2020/11/20/green-new-deal-can-save-joe-biden-america/ 11-20)

The Green New Deal can restore the competitiveness of the U.S. economy and secure a major advance in the fight against climate change. There is no other policy construct on the horizon that has any chance of delivering so many salutary outcomes. In the bargain, it can do that by directly addressing the impetus that gave rise to Trump and Trumpism. Trumpism is not an accidental phenomenon. It has been in gestation for over four decades. It began in the 1980s, with Reagan, when the U.S. made the explicit policy decision to transfer massive shares of national income and wealth from the working and middle classes to those who were already the most-wealthy. This was the notorious “Supply Side Economics.” Supply Side Economics lowered tax rates on the highest income earners from 71% to 35%. It did this without any requirement that the Titans of Capitalism invest their new-found gains in the U.S. economy. So, they didn’t. They invested them in the Asian Tigers: Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, and China. Over the next four decades, U.S. financiers and industrialists moved trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of factories, and tens of millions of high-paying working-class jobs out of the country, mainly to Asia. The consequence was that tens of millions of poorly educated working-class whites lost their high-paying jobs and their affluent livelihoods. It is their rage at the system that inflicted this life-loss on them which forms the core of Trumpism. That rage is amplified by the ascent of minorities over the same period, with poorly-educated whites seeing not just their incomes and economic security devastated, but their relative social standing undermined as well. It is social humiliation compounding economic devastation and its effect is all too real. Unless Biden and the Democratic party reverse this dynamic, by restoring high-paying jobs to tens of millions of working-class citizens, Trumpism will only grow. Whether Trump is around or not, Trumpism will elevate a new demagogue to lead the hate parade, and there are many wannabe Donabees slithering in the wings. Fortunately, the Green New Deal comes at a moment of tectonic, once-in-a-century shift in industrial civilization. It is that shift that makes the GND both necessary and possible. Every civilization operates on an energy “substrate,” the energy source that complements human labor to raise the level of possible consumption. For millennia, that energy source was wood. Wood contains the compressed energy of dozens of years of solar rays hitting the planet. Burning it releases that energy for human consumption. In the late 1700s, the British learned how to substitute coal for wood. Coal contains the compressed energy of millions of years of solar light hitting the planet, so delivers dozens of times more energy per unit of fuel compared to wood. The result was the Industrial Revolution and British domination of global affairs for the whole of the nineteenth century. In the late 1800s, U.S. inventors learned how to substitute oil for coal. Oil contains about four times the available energy of coal, per unit of volume. It’s also liquid, so easier to handle and move around, in pipes. It was U.S. mastery of oil, incarnated in the automobile industry, that allowed the U.S. to dominate global economic production in the twentieth century, much as Britain, based on its mastery of coal, had dominated in the nineteenth century. In the twenty-first century it is already clear that renewable energy will displace fossil fuels as the dominant source of energy powering industrial civilization. This is partly due to economics: electricity from renewables is already comparable in cost to electricity from fossil fuels. As volumes increase, costs for renewables will continue to decrease, possibly by orders of magnitude, making the economic case for conversion more and more attractive. The drive for conversion is also a matter of compulsion. Burning fossil fuels dumps some 12 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. This creates the “greenhouse effect” where heat from the planet is no longer radiated out into space, but is reflected back and contained by the atmosphere. The resultant “global warming,” unless reversed, threatens to destroy much of life on the planet. So, the planetary imperative to move off of fossil fuels is of the highest order. The Green New Deal operationalizes both the economic motive and the ecological imperative to move to a new energy substrate to power industrial civilization across the globe. This means that massive sectors of the U.S. economy will be rebuilt to use renewable energy. Automobiles will rapidly move from being powered by oil to being powered by electricity. The implications for batteries, machine tooling, and manufacturing, to say nothing of “gas” stations and repair shops will be epochal. If automobiles were integral to U.S. culture and economic dominance in the 1900s, their new incarnation will be pivotal to transformation and survival in the 2000s. Energy generation and distribution will be similarly revolutionized. If you drive north from Indianapolis or east from San Francisco or south from Abilene, you encounter thousands of industrial-scale windmills spanning hundreds of square miles. Wind generation in the U.S. doubled between 2008 and 2017 and its pace of growth is accelerating. It is telling that three of the five largest wind farms in the U.S. are located in Texas, the largest oil-producing state. Tens of millions of buildings, from homes to commercial structures, will have to be retrofitted to utilize energy more efficiently. This will require the employment of millions of skilled tradesmen. Local energy production, through solar collectors, will also grow exponentially, again, employing millions of skilled workers. All manner of common and civic structures generally lumped under the heading of “infrastructure” will need to be modernized. This includes everything from the national electricity distribution grid to transit systems, public buildings, water and gas distribution networks, highways, and more. Once again, this will require the retraining and employment of millions of skilled tradesmen. The question necessarily arises: how will this once-in-a-century transformation be paid for? There are several sources, some direct, some indirect. Their totality more than pays for the Green New Deal, indeed, makes it a net income and wealth generator over coming decades. Most importantly, leadership by the government and targeted investment incentives will incent private capital to fund the bulk of the transition. This is how the government helped midwife the transition to oil and automobiles in the twentieth century. It built millions of miles of modern roads and interstate highways without which high-powered automobiles would have been useless. One of the second-order effects was the vast panoply of culture that we know of as suburbia, almost all of it built from private capital. The first round of “seed money” from the government can come from taxing the income of the top 10% of income earners. In the 40 years between 1977 and 2007, their share of national income grew from 34% to 47%, a staggering increase over a relatively short period of time, much of it unearned but “gifted” to them by the sole artifice of lower income taxes. If all we did was to increase taxes on this class even a little bit, it would yield trillions of dollars of funding to underwrite the tens of millions of high-paying jobs needed to carry out the buildout. Much of the funding would come from increased tax revenues generated from millions of skilled tradesmen being re-employed in high-earning jobs across the entire spectrum of the U.S. economy. Their higher incomes and spending would also generate greater economic activity in its own right. This is what occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, often known of as “the golden age of capitalism.” Government investments in the foundations of the economy led to many times more private investment and many multiples more, again, of private spending. Much of the funding will be secured by reducing military spending, now clocking in at nearly a trillion dollars a year. This would be possible by reducing the need for oil, and, therefore, the need for the U.S. to garrison the Middle East. In the past two decades, the U.S. has spent more than $6 trillion on ill-conceived, failed, and counterproductive wars in the Middle East. This amount, alone, would be enough to pay for the whole of the Green New Deal and would make the world, and, therefore, the U.S., safer from international terror. With lower-cost energy powering more and more economic activity, the economy as a whole would become increasingly competitive in global markets. Right now, the U.S. runs trade deficits in excess of $600 billion a year. That is $600 billion a year that is shipped directly out of the U.S. to other countries. The cost of funding those deficits raises the cost of borrowed money, and therefore the cost of everything in the economy that is bought or operated on borrowed money, which is to say almost everything. A more efficient and productive economy would also mean that the U.S. government itself would have to borrow less to keep the economy working. Over the past 40 years, the government has borrowed $26 trillion, the cumulative increase in the national debt over that period. It is an almost inconceivable and definitely unsustainable sum, a sign of just how much damage Supply Side Economics has inflicted on the economy. As with trade deficits, lowered annual budget deficits would result in lower interest rates in the economy as a whole, making everything bought on borrowed money cheaper. A final, indirect source of funding would come from reduced damage incurred from climate change. The fires afflicting the west, the floods in the Midwest, the hurricanes in the south, Hundred Year Freezes in the northeast, crop damage throughout the country; these have real economic costs that are not less because they are not explicitly tallied to climate change. They cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year and are growing wildly. Simply reducing their incidence would effectively free up hundreds of billions of dollars a year for use in the private economy. Making the U.S. economy more competitive in global markets would help maintain its status as one of the leading countries of the world. Not making this transition and keeping the economy dependent on a twentieth century energy substrate while the rest of the world—including our greatest adversary, China—is moving onto future energy systems, is an ironclad prescription for technological stagnation, economic atrophy, and national decline. It is far less a choice of whether, than the choice of how to, and how quickly. We started this essay on the premise that Democrats needed to do something to stave off catastrophic defeat in the 2022 midterms. Actually, the political consequences of this decision are much greater than that. The U.S. is losing coherence. It is losing those common values, narratives, ideals, and norms that have historically bound it together as a successful society. Take, for example, the simple yet profound value of a belief in democracy. That belief is one of the bedrocks of American identity and has been since the country’s founding. Yet, it is one of the beliefs and institutions that have suffered the most from the conviction of almost half the country that “the system” doesn’t work for them anymore. In the run-up to the elections, Donald Trump repeatedly refused to endorse a peaceful transfer of power, one of the hallmarks of a functioning democracy. He routinely lied about the incidence of voter fraud, casting doubt on the viability of democracy. He filed lawsuit after lawsuit, in state after state, to try to suppress access to voting. All of this was done in broad daylight, and still, 72 million Americans voted for him. This is perilous for the functioning of American society. Since the election, Trump has continued his assaults on democracy, lying still more about how the election was rigged, and stolen. This lying, and its acceptance by almost half of the electorate, is itself the greatest threat to the integrity—the coherence—of the nation. If it is allowed to fester and to grow, we will almost certainly devolve into some kind of civic seizure, a breakdown of institutions and order that will require authoritarian imposition of power to contain. That is what Trump has been aiming for all along. That is what happened to Weimar Germany in 1933 when the Great Depression caused a similar collapse of faith in democratic institutions. Germany’s recourse was to elevate Adolph Hitler to power to “restore order.” We know how that worked out, but that does not have to be the recourse for the U.S. However, it will almost certainly be so if we do not address the betrayal that tens of millions of citizens feel they have suffered at the hands of a government that has delivered in spades for the wealthy, but failed to deliver basic economic security for them. The Green New Deal can avert that catastrophe, improve life chances for hundreds of millions of citizens, keep the U.S. competitive and vital in international affairs, and help save the planet from ecological apocalypse. As mentioned above, there is nothing else on the policy horizon that begins to come close to delivering those blessings. The Biden administration must choose the only economic policy available to save itself. In the bargain, it will save the country, and the planet, as well. It’s a worthy legacy to work for.

(Michael, Economics@Bemidji, Mathew, Economics@UMKC, Introduction In Full Employment and Social Justice: Solidarity and Sustainability ed. Murray and Forstater, )

The Job Guarantee also has the potential to increase worker productivity, especially when complemented with an education and training component. Increasing innovation in technology that structurally changes the way we live, work, and play fuel the global twenty-first-century economy. This model of creative destruction requires a robust model of education and training, one that is responsive to the changing needs of regional markets and national economies (Wisman and Reksten 2013). Through education and training, the Job Guarantee sector can take the lead in developing and investing in alternative green technologies. The public sector is the only economic sector that has the means to invest in alternative technologies; because unlike private businesses, it can divorce itself from the profit motive. Many existing federally financed goods and services are not economically profitable, but societies decide that they serve a larger social benefit; current examples include government investment in mass transit, national parks, and the investment in public education, to name just a few. In a similar vein, part of the education and training component can be orientated toward these and similar welfare-enhancing programs. Specifically, federal governments can use the Job Guarantee program as a means to seriously address the dual problems of ever increasing natural resource use and climate change through the teaching and adoption of a “green economic” system of development alongside traditional workforce development programs.(4)

(Eugene, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/yes-the-green-new-deal-is-audacious-but-we-have-no-choice-but-to-think-big/2019/02/18/40ee4d02-3098-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html , 2-18)

Since the 14-page resolution was introduced in Congress this month by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), critics have been falling over themselves to denounce the Green New Deal’s policies as prohibitively expensive, totally unworkable or somehow Venezuelan. If those opponents would stop shouting long enough to actually read the document, they’d see that it’s not a compendium of concrete policies at all, but rather a set of goals. And they are the right goals. The Green New Deal seeks to outline a national project for our time — not just a response to a grave environmental threat, but a framework for enhanced growth, opportunity and fairness. The laudable aim is to play offense, not defense, in the fight to limit climate change. We are going to have to wage that battle one way or another. Why not do it on our terms, before Miami slips underwater and the yet-unburned parts of California go up in flames? The best historical analogy is not the New Deal but World War II, when mobilization of the nation’s vast productive capacity not only defeated Germany and Japan but also generated unprecedented domestic economic growth, hugely expanding the middle class. Once again, the planet faces a dire threat. Once again, the United States can help lead the world to victory. It’s a massive overreach, critics of the Green New Deal say. But any effort to address climate change that is commensurate with the scale of the problem is going to look like an overreach. Worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases — the cause of global warming — are beginning to level off, but they need to start falling, and fast, if we are to spare our grandchildren and great-grandchildren an ecological nightmare. Can we really shift entirely to clean energy sources within 10 years, as the resolution pledges? Well, certainly not if we don’t try. In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy announced the goal of sending an American to the moon and back by the end of the decade, NASA scientists had only a vague idea how to do such a thing. They figured it out, and succeeded in 1969. Breakthroughs will be needed, for example, in solar energy technology and battery storage. Why should China — now the world’s biggest producer of solar panels — be allowed to make these innovations and reap the resulting economic benefits? Why not the United States? It’s too expensive, naysayers complain. They point to a clause in the resolution that calls for “upgrading all existing buildings in the United States” to make them more energy-efficient. That sounds absurd — until you remember the massive blackout drills that took place across the country during World War II. People participated. It was their patriotic duty. Windows, roofs, doors, appliances — all have to be replaced every once in a while, and all can be made less wasteful of energy. And as for goals such as making sure every American has “high-quality health care” and “affordable, safe and adequate housing,” well, those have been Democratic Party positions for a very long time. Acting alone would be pointless, skeptics say. Indeed, China is now by far the world’s biggest carbon emitter, with the United States second and India a fast-rising third. What would be the point of going to great effort to reduce U.S. emissions while others just burn more coal? Think about it, though. We are, after all, the second-biggest emitter, which means that any substantial reduction would indeed have measurable impact. Also, officials in China and India, unlike those in the Trump administration, understand and accept the conclusions of climate scientists. China may be adding coal-fired power plants, but it is also making massive investments in clean energy. Do you really want Beijing to lead the way into the future? Shouldn’t it be Washington? That’s a rationale for the Green New Deal that the Make America Great Again crowd should embrace. If you believe in American exceptionalism, you believe that the United States has a duty to lead at moments of crisis. This is such a moment. Look at the big picture. Unless you deny the science of climate change, you have to believe that we need to take bold action. Stop all the nitpicking. Enough with the posturing. Let’s talk about what to do.

(Dean Snyder is assistant professor of political economy at Antioch College. Matt Guardino is associate professor of political science at Providence College and author of Framing Inequality: News Media, Public Opinion, and the Neoliberal Turn in U.S. Public Policy (Oxford University Press 2019). )

Looking Ahead The massive public investments that a transformative Green New Deal requires should reach beyond energy production and distribution to reshape government’s role in the interlinked areas of commerce, communication, and consumption. Policy and institutional reforms like these can undercut business models that feed ecological destruction, nurture political spaces to defend against corporate backlash, and create launching points for further progress. Public action to raise wages, reduce working hours, and eliminate consumer debt combined with initiatives to raise the quality and sustainability of consumer goods, strengthen privacy rights, weed out pernicious advertising, and democratize our political discourse. These moves would help foster concrete improvements in everyday life that can produce lasting popular support for the broader left political project. While we have focused here on the United States, reimagining and reshaping consumption in the world’s most economically powerful and ecologically destructive nation has global implications. For one thing, cutting wasteful consumption in the Global North is essential to offset increases in essential consumption in the Global South demanded by social justice and human dignity. And beyond the existential menace of climate change, current consumption patterns exacerbate a host of global socioecological ravages, from the islands of plastic-choking oceans to the mountains of toxic e-waste that endanger the world’s poorest and most marginalized people. Even if every megawatt of US electricity came from zero-carbon sources and every transportation mode ran on green power, serious efforts to build a world where most people can flourish require a new politics of consumption.

(Mark Paul is an assistant professor of economics at New College of Florida and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. William Darity Jr is the Samuel DuBois Cook professor of public policy, African and African-American Studies, and economics; and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. Darrick Hamilton is associate professor of economics and urban policy at the Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy and the Department of Economics, New School for Social Research.https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/federal-job-guarantee-universal-basic-income-investment-jobs-unemployment/)

4. Federal jobs could provide socially useful goods and services. During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were public employment programs designed to put Americans back to work after the national unemployment rate reached 25 percent. These programs, implemented under the Roosevelt administration, provided socially beneficial goods and services that benefited all Americans. Some of our national parks — Zion, Glacier, and Shenandoah — received substantial work contributions from employees of the federal jobs programs. The Blue Ridge Parkway was a federally funded and staffed infrastructure program. A new federal job guarantee could undertake similarly bold and much-needed public-works projects. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the United States a D+ in infrastructure and prices necessary repairs at $3.6 trillion. This lack of investment has lowered employment rates, cost businesses sales, and reduced incomes for American families. Make no mistake, these are government choices. They could choose instead to hire unemployed workers to repair bridges, maintain roadways, and update power grids. Likewise, Bill McKibben just called for us to “declare war” against climate change. With climate change being perhaps the largest threat to our well-being, bold action is needed. The job guarantee program would create the capacity to do just that. Professor Robert Pollin of the Political Economy Research Institute calls for scaling up the transition to a green economy, which would create millions of new jobs along the way. He and his colleagues estimate what a Green New Deal would look like, and find that a transition to a green economy would amount to an estimated $200 billion in investment annually, resulting in a drop in “US emission by 40 percent within 20 years, while creating a net increase of 2.7 million jobs.” In part, this is due to the labor-intensive nature of energy efficiency and other “green” investments.