Links tagged “economics”

“Now that the feds have infinite free money, they can just take over one sector of the economy after another.”

The White House is pushing an infrastructure bill that could reshape the discussion around capitalism as it seems to reestablish the federal government as a primary driver of how the economy should grow and function. In addition to traditional infrastructure projects, Biden’s $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan would make government investments in broadband, electric vehicles, climate change, elderly care, child benefits, housing and developing future technologies. It would redefine classic infrastructure projects to include investments in workers and families paid for by tax hikes on corporations. ...

“Every corner of the country is going to be touched by this in some way,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Morano: "Ultimately, what it is going to do, it is leading to lower economic growth, which you would intuitively think, why would they want to do that? I have to go chapters in the book “Green Fraud,” Tucker, and why they want low economic growth. They love the lockdowns for this reason. They call it degrowth, planned recessions, this is that first step to transfer private equity, private finance into government hands, and this is a big step."

Alexander C. R. Hammond: "Prosperity frees people to protect the environment. ... the lockdowns may cause massive environmental destruction in the long term. Simply put, people can afford to care about the environment only when they have enough income to cover their basic needs. If their survival depends on killing an endangered animal or cutting down a rare tree, then so be it." ... 

"The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis posits that environmental damage increases in tandem with economic growth, but only until a certain level of income is reached. Once people are wealthy enough not to have to worry about day-to-day survival, environmental degradation stops, and ecosystems begin to recover. The environmental scientist Jesse H. Ausubel, for example, suggests that once a nation achieves a GDP per capita of $6,200 (in 2021 dollars), deforestation stops or afforestation occurs."

"The lockdowns have already wreaked havoc on endangered species and protected habitats in the developing world. In Kenya, the killing of giraffes has skyrocketed. Given that a tonne of giraffe meat is worth about $1,000 (i.e., almost seven months of the average Kenyan salary), it is unsurprising that desperate locals have resorted to slaughtering the endangered animal. Kenya’s Mara Elephant Project also recorded that illegal logging in the region peaked in the months following the first lockdown. In Botswana, government workers had to evacuate dozens of critically endangered black rhinos from the Okavango Delta after six of the animals were found dead after the lockdowns were implemented."

Marc Morano comments: My new book Green Fraud devotes an entire chapter to how climate activists praise COVID lockdowns and are seeking climate lockdowns and "planned recessions' and Degrowth to fight global warming. 

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Axios: "The global economy shrank by an estimated 4.3% in 2020, according to data from the World Bank. That contraction was due both to the direct pain of the pandemic and the effects of social distancing measures, but it also led to a roughly 6% reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions — the biggest annual drop since WWII. However accidental, 2020 represented perhaps the best example we've ever experienced of degrowthism in action."

"For degrowthers, simply cleaning up the global economy by switching from fossil fuels to zero-carbon sources of energy isn't enough. Economic growth — the goal of essentially every government everywhere — is itself the problem.
Environmental activist Greta Thunberg...chastised delegates at a UN climate summit in 2019: “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
The movement now has its own dedicated academic journals, associations and conferences."

Patrick J. Michaels / Kevin Dayaratna: "Here is a dirty little secret that few are aware of: All those horrifying future temperature changes that grace the front pages of papers of record aren’t really the predicted warming above today’s level. Instead, they are the difference between two models of climate change. The “base climate” isn’t the observed global temperature at a given point in time. Instead, it is what a computer model simulates temperatures to be prior to any significant changes in carbon dioxide.

Reality need not apply to these calculations."

The Fed 'lacks jurisdiction over and expertise in environmental matters' ...

Fed Governor Lael Brainard said last month the central bank may consider subjecting banks to climate scenario analysis.

The new proposal for a separate energy and carbon audit — distinct from the financial audit and conducted by a different professional body — not only imposes further costs on businesses, but also creates a green profession focused on monitoring the requirements of the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting Regulations. Since these are supported by criminal sanctions this is sinister and unwelcome development.