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Full Employment

locusmag.com

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Re: Full Employment

#31

Post by eru »

vages wrote: post #26
eru wrote: post #2

Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch... Wikipedia quotes studies that put the estimated aggregate impact at losing about 0% to 20% of world GDP. That's comparable eg to moving from NYC to a place with average US GDP per capita. That's certainly a lot, but perhaps not a world shattering impact. (Edit: the studies quoted on that Wikipedia page are quite old by now. It would be useful to…

Assuming that continued economic growth takes place (a safe assumption; the so-called third world countries are growing at a fast pace), the net economic result could still be positive. Here's a quote from Nick Bostrom from the Wikipedia article: > Even the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, a report prepared for the British Government which has been criticized by some as overly pessimistic, estimates t…

Yes, that's what I was aiming at. Fortunately, these days poor countries develop so quick, that even a 20% hit is equivalent to only a few years of growth.

However, I would go by the formulation in your quote "swamped by other factors" and not with "the net economic result could still be positive."

To make your formulation work, you'd have to say the net impact of business-as-usual growth and climate change. It's easy to misinterpret that.

Do keep in mind that difference places on earth will most likely be hit at a different magnitude. So some will suffer more than others.

That's a good argument for allowing more migration around the world.

Re: Full Employment

#32

Post by zumachase »

skybrian wrote: post #20
zumachase wrote: post #4

> Should that day come to pass, the money-issuer – the central bank – can procure all that idle labor, without creating inflation. If the private sector doesn’t want labor, then there’s no bidding war between companies and a federal jobs program or a universal basic income, so creating money to buy people’s labor won’t drive up the price of that labor. I had to stop reading after this. This is not how inflation works…

While I don't agree with Doctorow's argument at all, I would say that inflation is misunderstood more than it's understood. For example, there is a naive belief that inflation is proportional to the money supply. This seems to be a garbled version of monetarism, which is no longer how central banks think about it, but even monetarism is more complicated than that. Monetarist theory is based on MV = PQ, where M is the…

Yes this is all very true, but he makes the case explicitly for money velocity to increase. He’s not suggested printing money for savers or rent seekers, he’s suggested printing money for the express purpose of consumption: I have been automated and thus can not afford basic staples without basic income. This is inflationary not matter how you slice it.

Re: Full Employment

#33

Post by laluser »

climwe wrote: post #6
laluser wrote: post #3

I think the general marketing problem with climate change is that people know it's going to happen, but not exactly when. Are we going to have issues next year, 5 years, 20 years, etc? How will these issues impact me and my neighbors? It's difficult to predict these things, so I think many people become skeptical of the milestones we are supposed to be hitting due to climate change and we just become reactive as a so…

But... we are having issues right now? People aren't acting because there's no economic incentive, it is only in part due to denial or ignorance. Many of the world's leaders who have to power to shift the narrative are not doing so because it would be a short term economic loss and businesses aren't happy about it. I mean, many technologies like carbon scrubbers already exist. Why aren't businesses buying them? This…

Totally agree that we, as in the world, are having issues right now and this is clearly being observed. My only point with this is to say that the impact is not being felt by most people just yet. The economic incentives for reducing our carbon footprint are not there for the public market to make any significant improvements to the situation. If the economic incentives are not there for the public markets, then that means new policy needs to be enacted in order to tackle this, which given the state of the world right now, seems unlikely.

Re: Full Employment

#34

Post by vages »

js8 wrote: post #28

It's always refreshing to read someone who really gets that economy is not about money, but rather about what is being produced. The title reminded me of the famous Kalecki essay, Political Aspects of Full Employment, which actually explains deeper why this is not so easy to do as Cory Doctorow imagines (if you hadn't read it, I really recommend it, it's one of the best works on economics ever). Here I think is the c…

The essay "The political aspects of full employment" by Michal Kalicki

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/05/political-aspects-of-full...

Re: Full Employment

#35

Post by js8 »

eru wrote: post #2

Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch... Wikipedia quotes studies that put the estimated aggregate impact at losing about 0% to 20% of world GDP. That's comparable eg to moving from NYC to a place with average US GDP per capita. That's certainly a lot, but perhaps not a world shattering impact. (Edit: the studies quoted on that Wikipedia page are quite old by now. It would be useful to…

> Wikipedia quotes studies that put the estimated aggregate impact at losing about 0% to 20% of world GDP. That's comparable eg to moving from NYC to a place with average US GDP per capita.

That's basically Nordhaus' idiotic argument. Agriculture is only about 3% of GDP, so it looks like we can take that hit, no problem. Except - if we have no food, there is no civilization. See https://braveneweurope.com/steven-keen-4c-of-global-warming-...

Measuring climate change impacts on the economy only by total GDP is a really bad idea. You really can't neglect the dependencies in the economic production, especially on agriculture.

Re: Full Employment

#36

Post by musicale »

burlesona wrote: post #9

This is a great essay, but it doesn’t give me much hope for the US. Our behavior during this pandemic has been for one part of the country to finger wag and disbelieve while the other part suffers, while doing very little to actually fight the disease. It feels like we are so incapable of responding to this crisis that we are simply retreating into fantasy and pretending it’s not a big deal. This is all with a fast m…

> while doing very little to actually fight the disease

Are you saying that there isn't much in the way of medical research going on to try to come up with treatments, preventive measures, and potential vaccines or cures for the disease?

What do you think could be done to start that kind of research in the US?

Re: Full Employment

#37

Post by smallnamespace »

zumachase wrote: post #32
skybrian wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't agree with Doctorow's argument at all, I would say that inflation is misunderstood more than it's understood. For example, there is a naive belief that inflation is proportional to the money supply. This seems to be a garbled version of monetarism, which is no longer how central banks think about it, but even monetarism is more complicated than that. Monetarist theory is based on MV = PQ, where M is the…

Yes this is all very true, but he makes the case explicitly for money velocity to increase. He’s not suggested printing money for savers or rent seekers, he’s suggested printing money for the express purpose of consumption: I have been automated and thus can not afford basic staples without basic income. This is inflationary not matter how you slice it.

It’s inflationary, but the wealth inequality, unemployment/underemployment, and recession we have are all deflationary forces, e.g. CPI inflation is well below historical trends since 2008.

The argument is we have room to nudge inflation back to normal while also helping people.

Re: Full Employment

#38

Post by Unsimplified »

zumachase wrote: post #27
climwe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is excess food and it is given to people who would not otherwise buy food, there would be no negative effect on prices or the economy in general. Maybe examples of these types of people don't exist in America all that much but they certainly do in the rest of the world. Your argument only makes sense if the excess food is given to people who can afford it and just want to eat for free.

I’m sorry, that’s just not how economics works. A market with excess supply necessarily has lower prices than one that is balanced, ceteris paribus. Idaho potatoes were mentioned above. They are only being thrown away because the market does not want them. The mechanism by which this happens is price: prices drop low enough that it’s cheaper to throw away (we saw negative oil prices recently). One explanation is that…

Incorrect. The use of discarded product by non-market flows has no effect on market price.

Re: Full Employment

#39

Post by js8 »

zumachase wrote: post #4

> Should that day come to pass, the money-issuer – the central bank – can procure all that idle labor, without creating inflation. If the private sector doesn’t want labor, then there’s no bidding war between companies and a federal jobs program or a universal basic income, so creating money to buy people’s labor won’t drive up the price of that labor. I had to stop reading after this. This is not how inflation works…

> I had to stop reading after this. This is not how inflation works and it borders on the preposterous to surmise that CBs can monetize deficits without creating inflation because there is excess supply in one market.

I think the government doesn't have to run deficits, it can always tax the money back out of the economy. (The only problem is nobody likes that, for some reason. People seem to prefer inflation to taxation.)

It's actually more honest, because it better shows what actually happens. Government prints money, (hopefully) invests into places that benefit the society as a whole, and then taxes the excess money back from wherever they ended up, destroying them (by not spending them again).

Re: Full Employment

#40

Post by lcam84 »

How many pollution do we need to make to "relocate every coastal city in the world kilometers inland"? The notion that the objective for the human race it's to be employed is one of the two main reasons that we are destroying the planet.
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