Check this out:
It's the Stupid Economy
Frank de Jong, Schalkenbach Board
Recessions are not natural or necessary, and can be prevented. They occur because our tax structure punishes entrepreneurs and rewards monopolists and speculators, and since we are all directly or indirectly entrepreneurs and speculators, we all contribute to the problem. Since there is more profit in monopoly control of finite resources (like oil, trees, land, water...) than in the production of goods or services, money is "invested" in nature than in enterprises. When too much money chases too few assets, like land, oil and other resources, it inflates prices, tying up cash, causing unemployment, and creating speculative bubbles which ultimately must deflate causing recessions. A green economy is a smart economy that minimizes bubbles and recessions. A smart economy is a stabile economy that taxes bads not goods, that untaxes jobs and businesses and instead collects the wealth (economic rent) that accrues to monopoly ownership of nature, at once conserving nature and eliminating booms and busts.
Bail out the Planet, Not Dirty Industry
Have you noticed? Astonishingly, everyone agrees the recession cure is green think and green tech. Usually getting out of a recession means more nature destruction. Normally it's de rigueur to build more freeways, bridges, dams, nuke reactors, or even start a war, but this time it's different. This time everyone is talking about renewable electricity, electric cars, local food, transit, green infrastructure, buying locally, healthy living and poverty elimination as the preferred ways to revitalize the economy. As George Fredrick Handel would say "Hallelujah". |
