Subject: "What Piketty
Forgot," by Noel Ortega,* Foreign Policy in Focus, June
18, 2014
Apparently, in his 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (link to my previous messages on this book) Thomas Piketty ignored the news about climate change/disaster (previous messages on climate change/disaster). I had wondered about that, not having seen any previous mention of that question.
Noel Ortega points out the problem:
The crisis of capitalism isn't just about the gap between rich and poor. It's about the gap between what’s demanded by our planet and what’s demanded by our economy.
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The traditional approach to inequality is to bring down those at the top while raising up those at the bottom. But to what level should we bring people, considering our finite planet?
Do we want everyone to live a mythical American middle-class lifestyle? Where every family of four lives in a two-car-garage home with a TV in every room, and every family member has a smart phone, tablet, and computer? Where they take a vacation to the other side of the globe once a year, and send their children away to a university and buy them a car when they are of age?
Is this the standard of living we want for every person on the planet? Obviously it can’t be—it would require at least five Earths.
love,
Larry
* CommonDreams identifies Noel Ortega as the coordinator of the New Economy Working Group, a partnership among several groups including one of our old favorites, YES! Magazine. "[NEWGroup] is seriously considering the four-fold systemic crisis—ecological, economic, social, and political—to identify a just transition to the next system." More power to them fer sher with that "next system."
Apparently, in his 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (link to my previous messages on this book) Thomas Piketty ignored the news about climate change/disaster (previous messages on climate change/disaster). I had wondered about that, not having seen any previous mention of that question.
Noel Ortega points out the problem:
The crisis of capitalism isn't just about the gap between rich and poor. It's about the gap between what’s demanded by our planet and what’s demanded by our economy.
-------------
The traditional approach to inequality is to bring down those at the top while raising up those at the bottom. But to what level should we bring people, considering our finite planet?
Do we want everyone to live a mythical American middle-class lifestyle? Where every family of four lives in a two-car-garage home with a TV in every room, and every family member has a smart phone, tablet, and computer? Where they take a vacation to the other side of the globe once a year, and send their children away to a university and buy them a car when they are of age?
Is this the standard of living we want for every person on the planet? Obviously it can’t be—it would require at least five Earths.
love,
Larry
* CommonDreams identifies Noel Ortega as the coordinator of the New Economy Working Group, a partnership among several groups including one of our old favorites, YES! Magazine. "[NEWGroup] is seriously considering the four-fold systemic crisis—ecological, economic, social, and political—to identify a just transition to the next system." More power to them fer sher with that "next system."
