‘Net Zero’ And Keynesian ‘Stimulus’ Are Making Us Poorer
If you read the latest OECD publication, “Employment Outlook 2024: The Net Zero Transition and the Labour Market,” you would imagine that the world has not gone through the largest monetary and fiscal stimulus in decades.
The results are so poor, they are embarrassing. Furthermore, the report illustrates the impoverishment of citizens and subtly suggests that achieving the net zero goal will present an even greater challenge. Translation: You will be even poorer.
According to the OECD report, 20% of the global workforce is in jobs that will expand due to the net-zero transition. The report basically tells us that the remaining 80% will face significant challenges.
Furthermore, it highlights that “low-income and rural households usually spend more on goods and services with larger carbon footprints, such as energy and food, because they are typically necessary goods.
Therefore, climate-mitigation policies, by increasing the relative price of carbon-intensive goods, will tend to affect these households as consumers disproportionally, with a strong impact on the real value of their income and wages. Recent carbon pricing reforms in many countries have indeed proved regressive. Recycling the revenue from carbon taxes in the form of transfers to households, however, can make this type of reform progressive. Yet targeting these transfers towards household needs is key to cost efficiency. ” Thus, we are doomed. Just look at the disastrous result of the carbon tax in the European Union, what it has done to price inflation of non-replaceable goods and services and the widespread increase in discontent among citizens.
Why do we know that policymakers will not counteract Keynesian policies’ regressive impact? Because they have never done it. To argue that this time will be different is irresponsible when the same OECD report shows the disastrous results of “inclusive” and redistributive policies since 2019.
The report hails the good news of low unemployment rates. However, this publication fails to acknowledge the ease of manipulating unemployment rates. Indeed, the report does not make that connection but highlights how labour force participation has stagnated or declined and how real wages have fallen while average working hours per employee have slumped in the United States.
If the unemployment rate has fallen but the average hours worked per worker are flat, the labour participation rate has slumped, and real wages have declined, then there is no real improvement in employment.
According to the OECD report, average hours worked per worker have declined in all countries except three of the entire OECD, and real wage growth is negative in the United States as well as many other economies.
Now remember that these dreadful statistics come after the largest so-called “stimulus package” in decades. The largest monetary experiment, combined with an unprecedented level of public debt increase, has left workers poorer. The worst is yet to come.
The OECD report warns that the net zero transition will increase price inflation in essential goods and services as well as generate significant displacement of low-skilled labor. They even warn that low-skilled jobs in high-emission sectors pay better, and this will create challenges for citizens.
There is no way in which one can defend this social engineering. Keynesianism always leads to malinvestment, misallocation of capital, higher indebtedness, and worse outcomes for workers and the middle class for a very simple reason: governments do not have better or more information about the requirements of society, and they spend money that comes from somebody else.
Malinvestment does happen in an open economy. However, creative destruction takes care of it. Malinvestment when the government controls the economy is the norm. And instead of creative destruction, we get subsidized misallocation of capital.
The era of constant Keynesian stimulus plans has eroded the middle class and created record levels of public debt. The net zero plan, which is the ultimate Keynesian top-down government-imposed system, will add scarcity, persistent price inflation, and impoverishment.
The only way to achieve net zero is to let technology flourish, allow free competition and open markets to work their way, and create a transition that benefits the majority with cheaper and cleaner goods and services. When governments make decisions with public funds, they ensure a negative result. They will overspend, perpetuate price inflation, and impoverish the same ones they claim to defend. Socialism never works. Climate socialism is bound to fail miserably, resulting in increased poverty.
MESSAGE TO DEEP STATE MINIONS: Don’t Follow Your Orders, Come Out With Your Hands Up & Join The Resistance
The Degrowth Movement Is Antihuman & Its Advocates Are Fine With That
The assimilation of degrowth ideas into the mainstream portends dire consequences for economic well-being. Degrowth is trumpeted as the solution to averting a climate catastrophe, but it will reverse the economic fortunes of practitioners. Sustained economic growth became the norm recently in history, and surely most people don’t want a return to a preindustrial era with episodic growth and lower living standards. The typical person today would be reluctant to trade the luxuries of economic growth for the trinkets that a less dynamic society affords.
Despite the effusive praise for degrowth, it is difficult to take proponents seriously because they lack a frame of reference. Upper-class intellectuals in rich countries shouldn’t be recommending degrowth because they have never been confronted with poverty. The track record of economic growth in reducing poverty and ameliorating living standards is exceptional, so automatically measures to curb economic growth will worsen the plight of humanity.
Proponents are forgetting that economic growth improves the environment over the long term, especially in richer countries possessing better institutions and high human capital levels. Rising incomes raise environmental consciousness because prosperity affords people time to invest in the environment. Growing affluence also leads to safer service jobs that don’t entail plundering the physical environment. Degrowth advocates are unaware that their recommendations revert society to an agriculturally based economic system that requires greater land use. Increasing reliance on agriculture hampers the goal of curtailing pollution since agricultural production is a primary contributor to atmospheric pollution.
Furthermore, degrowth advocates are unaware that the present trend is for carbon emissions to be divorced from economic growth. Economic growth is being decoupled from carbon emissions in rich and developing countries. During 2007-19, emissions decreased by 15% despite rising gross domestic product per person. Like America, Australia and Israel recorded lower emissions, notwithstanding higher growth rates. Moreover, rather than a reliance on green energy, the transition to a lower carbon economy has been expedited by the shift from manufacturing to services. Less energy-intensive jobs in the service sector now account for a larger share of jobs in rich countries. Germany, America, and Mexico all observed a decline in manufacturing from 2007-19.
Even more contradictory is the assumption that degrowth is the path to environmental sustainability. However, the irony is that innovations generated by the free-market economy will limit dependence on fossil fuels and coal. Without market-based innovations, there can be no alternative to energy sources condemned by degrowth activists. Another problem is that lower growth strips countries of the ability to invest in climate adaptation technologies. Diminished growth indicates that entrepreneurs and other actors won’t have sufficient resources to build the technologies to cut the emission of harmful gases.
Degrowth makes societies more vulnerable to pollution and poverty. Further, some theorize that degrowth could worsen environmental deterioration by compelling companies to substitute expensive though cleaner production technologies for cheaper but more polluting technologies. Although the degrowth movement is gaining momentum, its claims are disavowed by empirical evidence. Indeed, the proposals of degrowth advocates are likely to injure the well-being of society. For example, renewable energy technologies are promoted as eco-friendly; however, the evidence shows that the material footprint of these sources is greater than fossil fuels.
Scientist Mark P. Mills argues that building solar and wind systems necessitates approximately a tenfold increase in the total tonnage of common materials to produce an equivalent quantity of energy compared to constructing a natural gas or a hydrocarbon-charged power plant. More significantly, the minerals to build renewable technologies are acquired by the environmentally contentious process of mining. Not only do renewables entail pollution, but they are also expensive, intermittent, and struggle to compete without subsidies.
Policies advocated by the degrowth movement to decarbonize are so ruinous that Christopher Marquis in an essay defending degrowth conceded that these proposals are impractical:
“‘Green hydrogen’ is produced using renewable electricity, but the process is expensive and an inefficient use of renewable resources. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are complex, expensive, and technically difficult to implement; many early schemes have been abandoned.”
Meanwhile, critics argue that the degrowth movement is irrelevant because we already live in an era of degrowth, and we don’t like it. Professor Wim Naudé suggests economic decline is a feature rather than a bug of civilization, and we are entering a period of economic stagnation. Economic growth is slowing in Western countries to the chagrin of societies, so serious politicians must outline a road map for growth instead of entertaining the inanities of delusional activists. Obviously, chasing degrowth is not a laudable goal because slow growth is becoming the norm, and it has not benefited the globe.
MESSAGE TO DEEP STATE MINIONS: Don’t Follow Your Orders, Come Out With Your Hands Up & Join The Resistance
White House Press Sec Joins ‘The View’ to Gaslight on Biden Coup
Biden Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre appeared on ABC’s “The View” Tuesday morning, attempting to put a good face on the unraveling Biden administration.
After not holding a press briefing in over eight days, Jean-Pierre tried to clean up the messy Democrat coup forcing her boss off the presidential ticket, claiming instead that it was his decision to exit the race.
“What we saw from this president in the last couple of days was human decency, a good man, someone who decided not to put himself first – like we’ve seen before – but to put the American people first and this country first,” Jean-Pierre claimed, pretending Biden hadn’t refused to step down over the past few months.
KJP on ‘The View’: Biden “decided not to put himself first”. The gathering of bitches and lies they feed themselves
— Censored News ? (@TheSlickScript) July 23, 2024
pic.twitter.com/4u3tSDCiEl
Despite Trump narrowly surviving a recent assassination attempt, “View” co-host Joy Behar went on to refer to the former president as “Dear Leader,” a comparison to German dictator Adolf Hitler or North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, to which Jean-Pierre chuckled.
The White House press sec went on to address concerns from Republicans like Trump VP pick JD Vance, who during a rally on Monday pointed out if Biden isn’t “fit to run, he is not fit to serve.”
On The View, Karine Jean-Pierre says suggestions Biden can’t finish out his term are “ridiculous” and says Biden “will speak to this in about 24 hours or so…” pic.twitter.com/9Mp69KuwRg
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) July 23, 2024
“I think that’s ridiculous, seriously,” the press sec claimed, without offering further explanation.
“The president decided to not run for reelection. That’s it. That’s all he decided on. He wants to continue to do the work.”
“It shows how important his leadership is,” she added. “We have so much more work to do and he understands that.”
The press secretary’s comments come as Democrats descended on Biden after an abysmal debate performance last month and following a positive Covid test last week, rejecting the will of primary voters and pushing him off the ballot in favor of someone they hope will be more mentally competent to take on Trump.
For the time being, that person is ostensibly Kamala Harris; however, Democrat voters won’t truly know who their nominee is until delegates vote at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 22.
80-Year-Old Man Posting Trump Sign in Yard Mowed Down By Suspect Driving ATV
An 80-year-old Michigan resident who was posting a Trump sign in his yard was run over by a suspect driving an ATV and is in critical condition.
The City of Hancock Police Department on Sunday responded to three violent incidents that appeared to be politically motivated, targeting both Trump and law enforcement supporters.
“Around 4:45 p.m., we had reports of vandalism to two vehicles where the tire valves were broken off and another one, they had smashed all the windows out and tried to do the same [act]…with the vehicle tires,” Hancock Police Chief Tami Sleeman said.
The hit-and-run occurred an hour later, when an 80-year-old resident was placing Trump signs in his yard.
According to Sleeman, the ATV driver had pulled out the signs, and when the resident tried to put them back, the driver came back into the yard and ran the resident over.
The resident has been hospitalized at the UP Health System – Portage in critical condition with serious injuries, including a brain bleed.
“We’re not sure what could happen. Could he die from these injuries? Possible,” Sleeman said. “If there’s anybody out there that has any information on the person driving this four-wheeler, please call the Hancock Police Department.”
Police have since identified the suspect, who is reportedly thin with possible dreadlocks or long hair.
The incident comes over a week after Trump was almost killed by a would-be assassin at a rally in Pennsylvania and just two days after Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
It appears the unhinged presumably leftist individual lashed out in the face of an inevitable Trump victory as Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday.
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Pelosi Played Key Role In Biden’s Exit
The former House Speaker reportedly played a key role in pushing Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race. According to a report by NBC, Nancy Pelosi played a critical role is pressuring President […]
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