The Next Deal | Revising the US Social Contract for the 21st Century

Digest: 17 May 2013

High executive pay is caused by market forces, not board corruption, in the majority of cases; more research needs to be done on Solar Radiation Management even if that research only reinforces our recognition of the seriousness of mitigating global warming so as to avoid the need for avoid terribly uncertain SRM approaches; unmitigated climate change will be nothing less than disastrous for the global community; incremental sequester corrections do not remove the burden from many social programs to which the fixes have not applied; the importance of strategic governance in the context of the multi-polarised and multi-lateralised world economic growth; statistics and survey-based script-analysis offers risk-mitigation to film producers, and perhaps a threat to the creativity of scriptwriters; web-businesses exploit a peasant class, users of social media are entrapped, and that a thriving middle class is necessary to a sustainable Internet; the left-wing coalition Danish government is cutting back on early retirement plans, student stipends, the welfare rolls, and on those receiving lifetime disability checks.

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May 17, 2013No CommentRead More

Digest: 12 May 2013

Economic potential in the US is being strangled and impeded, Congress could help if it were more functional; Carbon emissions are acidifying the Arctic Ocean, it is not clear what the results will be but they may be serious; Mayor Bloomberg is expanding recycling in New York at a faster rate than New York has seen in more than 20 years; Republicans are “hollowing out” government when they can’t get laws repealed – if the law or regulatory agency is already in place the best way to weaken it is to fail to fund it; The current Supreme Court is the most business-friendly court at least since World War II, all current conservative justices are in the top ten of most business-friendly since 1945 and the top two most business-friendly justices of that period are current justices Roberts and Alito; Cyber-warfare has so far been mainly manifested in the context of espionage, but the risk of more disruptive cyber incursions must be taken seriously; Modern US society is increasingly rewarding self-directed innovators, this is good for those who fall into that type but less good for millions of others whose livelihood will be increasingly at risk; Pension-advance companies are preying off retired firefighters, military veterans, police officers and teachers, who need ready cash through difficult times – the debt carried by the 65-74 age group is rising faster than any other; Efforts to regulate the collection and sharing of personal information by online companies are needed, but they do not take account of the enormous amounts of personal data already collected.

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May 12, 2013No CommentRead More

Digest: 5 May 2013

Policies instigating innovation and business development are being employed by governments across the country; The US has dropped in rankings of research & development as a percentage of GDP but it still spends more than any other country; Cheap energy from shale gas and oil is causing a surge in energy-intensive industries such as plastics and chemicals; Education at all levels is being overhauled across the country with an increasing ability to acquire inexpensive qualifications linked to specific market needs but little if any improvement has been shown so far. On other fronts: Carbon emissions from cars are decreasing all over the world as a result of government policy, some carmakers are more invested than others; Findings seem to show the global climate is less sensitive than previously thought, it is not clear what is causing the discrepancy between rising emissions and stabilising global mean temperatures, but this may effect mitigation policy; In a time of increasing concern regarding regulation of tech industry’s market power and use of personal data, two changes in the FTC and FCC are in process; US media is providing less and less investigative journalism and the bulk of online advertising money comes from Google, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft and Facebook.

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May 5, 2013No CommentRead More

Digest: 28 April 2013

Whether Ben Bernanke’s policy of keeping interest rates low has helped or hindered the US economy; A company to help in the verifying the sustainability of products; Warren Buffett’s coal transportation business runs up against environmental interests, cattle ranchers, and Native Americans; New methods of more sustainable farming must be developed to avoid crop failures and increased pollution in the future; Mini Coopers fitted with two-way chargers are designed to both receive energy from and supply energy to power grids; Thatcher was a breaker of consensus than a builder of it and her policies were never in accord with the interests of a majority of UK citizens; Those who support social insurance as a necessary element of civilised modern society need to discredit terminology dictated by contrary interests; Switzerland’s success when seen against the economic and political crises of the rest of Europe; Technology is advancing far faster than is our understanding of its implications, and these advances carry the potential for massive disruption of human life.

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April 28, 2013No CommentRead More

Digest: 21 April 2013

Several factors give grounds for optimism regarding the future position of the US economy; How the Federal tax code affects small businesses; Increased bank funding through equity is necessary, but must not overshoot; China’s promotion of its currency, internationalisation or domestic financial liberalisation; Recurring natural disasters remind us that we must be diligent on mitigation; How to balance immigration interests where STEM graduates are concerned; Federal crackdowns on marijuana legalisation are counterproductive even to the interests of drug hawks; Credit should be given for the care the US employs in its use of drones; Common finals should be used in postsecondary education to help improve instructional quality; Book discusses how to increase the scale of small development projects; Book discusses data on use of arts and culture in economic development.

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April 21, 2013No CommentRead More

Digest: 14 April 2013

Direct “sharing” transactions between individuals cut established companies out of the picture; Shareholders are taking more active voting roles in the running of companies; Switzerland votes to reign in corporate managers; Architectural environments can be designed to foster creativity and innovative thinking; New economies are developing around the provision of disaster relief products; Biomimetic structures are being used to treat cancer and bone and organ reparation; Scientists are progressing towards the ability to bring extinct species back to life; Hawaii is quickly establishing itself as a leader in the implementation of solar technology; Justice Ginsberg must decide whether to step down while Obama is still president; Assassination has replaced capture, torture, and complicated litigation as the US method of choice for dealing with terrorists; Margaret Thatcher would not have been successful in today’s US Republican Party; New laws to criminalise those who seek to expose practices in the animal processing industry are antithetical to US principles of free choice and morality.

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April 14, 2013No CommentRead More

Digest: 7 April 2013

Money predicts policy in US democracy, the preferences of the lower and middle classes do not predict instituted policy except to the extent they align with upper class preferences; the US economic recovery is far more fragile than it seems, unsustainable policy decisions are leading the US down a very dangerous road; innovation is not reliant on freedom, rather it is reliant on wealth, and China’s innovative potential will soon be apparent and will surpass the US; Obama appoints new senior environment officials; the history of the New Deal and related literature discussed; the US should take a pragmatic view on the legalisation and taxation of marijuana; the repercussions of US policy on the use of Drones for assassination will be dire; division in US politics, if not fixed, will take the US down the same path it so avidly abhors, that of the EU; new teacher evaluation systems, after millions of dollars of investment, show suspiciously rosy results; efforts to institute more sensible health policy related to consumption stymied by sugar drinks lobby; new computer models are increasing our understanding of collective behaviour.

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April 7, 2013No CommentRead More

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Features View all

NYT: Danish Welfare

While much of southern Europe has been racked by strikes and protests as its creditors force austerity measures, Denmark still has a coveted AAA bond rating. But…

May 16, 2013No CommentRead More

IISS: Geopolitics

Economic growth, when widely shared, does more than increase living standards, it helps ease tensions within societies. Trade has an important role to play in boosting both growth…

May 16, 2013No CommentRead More

IISS: Climate Conflict

Climate change has been a key factor in the rise and fall of societies and states from prehistory to the recent fighting in the Sudanese state of Darfur.…

May 16, 2013No CommentRead More

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Smithsonian: Life in the City

Cities are shaped by their histories and by accidents of geography and climate but they are also universal, the products of social, economic and physical principles that transcend space and time. “Quantitative urbanism” is an effort to reduce to mathematical formulas the chaotic, exuberant, extravagant nature of one of humanity’s oldest and most important inventions, the city. The birth of this new field can be dated to 2003, when researchers convened a workshop on ways to “model”—in the scientific sense of reducing to equations—aspects of human society. With the technology to know virtually anything that goes on in an urban society, the question becomes how to leverage it to do good, to make the city run better, enhance security and safety and promote the private sector. While urbanization gave the world Athens and Paris, it also gave the chaos of Mumbai and the poverty of Dickens’ London.…

May 12, 2013No CommentRead More

Economics View all