By Nicholas Bloom, excerpt from HBR – March 2017 In 1980, the top 1% of adult earners in the U.S. made $420,000 a year, on average (before taxes and measured in 2014 dollars) — 27 times as much as the average for the bottom 50% of earners. Today the top 1% of earners make an average of $1.3 million a …
An Economy in Service to Life
Published on People-Centered Economic Development, 03/03/2016 by admin This is the title of an article on Natural Capitalism Solutions offering an accurate account of how our current economy developed post war to create the asymmetry of wealth we know to day as the 1% vs the 99% “Natural Capitalism Solutions is convening an international team of business people, thought leaders, scholars, …
We need to plan now for good employment, alternatives to declining jobs – systems for people, democracy, job creation and knowledge sharing are a path forward
Excerpt from Ross Mayfield, originally published at NewCo Shift.com …50% of the jobs will be gone in ~20 years. Not from the great sucking sound of jobs to Mexico that can be stopped with a wall. Not from moving offshore to China. From automation that is moving quickly from blue collar manufacturing to white collar information work. Second only to …
Good wages, jobs, services, saved money, and governance by the people: a cooperative in DC shows the way
From our friends at Shareable, by Cat Johnson, 31 Jan 2017 — exciting news about new cooperative approaches. After 14 years of incarceration, seven of it in solitary confinement, Juan Reid found himself living in a van, unable to get a steady job, struggling with bills, addiction, and the residue of childhood trauma. As Reid puts it, he was “going down …
Remembering Berta Cáceres and what was so neat about her
Indigenous and environmental leader Berta Cáceres was murdered in her home in Honduras on March 2, 2016. (Photo: Goldman Enviornmental Foundation) Interview by Beverly Bell in Common Dreams, 2 Mar 2017 How do you see your mother’s legacy? Berta Zúñiga Cáceres: She didn’t view her role in a top-down way, as in “I’m saving the people,” but rather she recognized the …
Oil Industry’s Suppression of Climate Science Began in 1940s, with “Smoke and Fumes Committee” and Funding of Researchers at Institute
Oil Industry’s Suppression of Climate Science Began in 1940s, Documents Reveal A trove of newly uncovered documents shows that fossil fuel companies were explicitly warned of the risks of climate change decades earlier than previously suspected. And while it’s no secret—anymore—that the companies knew about those dangers long ago, the documents, published by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), …
Pence took part in crafting post-Katrina “Shock Doctrine” reducing rights and privatizing services
By Naomi Klein in The Intercept, 24 Jan 2017 Here’s a lot of recovery and adaptation work:”After all the layers of subcontractors had taken their cut, there was next to nothing left for the people doing the work. For instance, the author Mike Davis tracked the way FEMA paid Shaw $175 a square foot to install blue tarps on damaged roofs, even though …
Gorbachev: In the modern world, wars must be outlawed, because none of the global problems we are facing can be resolved by war—not poverty, nor the environment, migration, population growth, or shortages of resources
Originally published on Common Dreams, by Andrea Germanos, 27 January 2017 Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that it appears “as if the world is preparing for war.” Writing in an op-ed published Thursday at TIME magazine, Gorbachev, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his role in ending the Cold War, writes that the most pressing problem facing the …
The income share of the top 10% increases CO2 emissions
Income Inequality and Carbon Emissions in the United States: A State-level Analysis, 1997–2012, by Andrew Jorgensona, , , Juliet Schorb, Xiaorui Huangb http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.12.016 The relationship between CO2 emissions and income inequality is analyzed longitudinally at the state level in the US The income share of the top 10% increases CO2 emissions. The effect of the Gini coefficient on CO2 emissions is nonsignificant. This study …
Poverty leads to stress and increased cortisol which increases obesity
From Science Daily, 23 Feb 2017 People who suffer long-term stress (such as those in poverty, according to epidemiologists Pickett and Wilkison) may also be more prone to obesity, according to research by scientists at UCL which involved examining hair samples for levels of cortisol, a hormone which regulates the body’s response to stress. The paper, published in the journal …