Practitioners of tax evasion and inequality: New research suggests that households in the top 0.01 percent, those with wealth over $40 million, evade 25 to 30 percent of person income and wealth taxes—about 10 times more than the general population

By Chuck Collins, The Nation, 21 June 2017 Agents of Inequality: How Wealth Managers to the Super-Rich Undermine Society and What We Can Do About It :An expert on their secretive world explains how these shadowy practitioners of financial trickery help facilitate widespread tax evasion—and undermine democratic government. Recent years have seen a tremendous amount of scholarship and commentary on the …

World-first climate and health framework from 30 health and medical groups calls for recognition of citizens’ ‘right to health’

By Michael Slezak, The Guardian, 21 June 2017 Australian health groups urge coal phase-out and strong emissions reduction: World-first climate and health framework from 30 health and medical groups calls for recognition of citizens’ ‘right to health’ To save hundreds of lives and billions of dollars, Australia should rapidly phase out coal power stations and establish strong emissions reduction targets, according …

Wait! What jobs will be safe from robots?

An excerpt from The Guardian, June 2017 Ford, the futurist, classifies resilient jobs in three areas. The first is jobs that involve “genuine creativity, such as being an artist, being a scientist, developing a new business strategy”. Ford notes: “For now, humans are still best at creativity but there’s a caveat there. I can’t guarantee you that in 20 years …

Sparking grid savings at home: Big potential savings

By John Farrell, 26 June 2017, Read the full report here. Introduction In the past decade, two major trends have threatened the ability of electric utilities to meet the needs of the electricity system. The first is that national electricity sales have flattened, a reversal of nearly 100 years of constant growth, while peak energy use has continued to climb. In …

Easy energy use cuts of 29% available for US commercial and government buildings

June 26th, 2017 by Joshua S Hill  A new report by the US Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has concluded that widespread use of building controls across the country could cut energy consumption by an average of 29%, or the equivalent electricity used by 12 to 15 million Americans. US Energy Department’s (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) investigated …

Growing cycling and walking adds to Vancouver’s downtown and business income

By Roy L Hales, on the ECOreport. 26 June 2017 Contrary to what some urban business owners expected, the global shift to alternate transportation has not adversely effected their revenue streams. A study from Portland, Oregon, found that “cyclists spent less than drivers on grocery trips, but more at restaurants, bars, and convenience stores.” The average pedestrian or cyclist in Manhattan’s East Village spends …

Social security for all: what would you do if your income were taken care of?

Common Dreams, 23 June 2013 U.N. special rapportuer Philip Alston says a “basic income offers a bold and imaginative solution to pressing problems that are about to become far more intractable as a result of the directions in which the global economy appears inexorably to be heading.” (Photo: Generation Grundeinkommen/flickr/cc) Amplifying the call for a universal basic income, a United …

Solving a parking crunch in downtown Austin without adding lots of parking

By Stephen Miller on Streetsblog, 23 June 2017 Cities and towns are constantly fretting about downtown parking. But what they often perceive as a “parking shortage” isn’t caused by a lack of parking — it’s the result of poor management of the parking they already have. The upshot is that many cities, seeking cheap and plentiful car storage, pursue policies that make their parking and traffic …