Category: economy

Religion and Extinction

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn economic revolution, economy, Environment, Politics, religion, warLeave a comment

We are different to any other species in that we have evolved what we call economics, science of extending survival. Or is it a massive inter-generational war that the current political generation are guilty of, increasingly responsible for causing environmental collapse.

Why do we measure progress by growth? When we solve that one, and measure progress with an economics that includes compounding interest for any future consequence of our indulgence.

Only then we can call ourselves good Christians or good Muslims or good Jews. We remain greedy and primitive in our mutual interests. Why think like this?

Part of the lesson of certain matters remaining secular and out of the control of the driving faith or the possessors of property or the military – but that the ultimate control must remain honestly in the hands of the people. So we have countries for that. But faith is a personal matter and your path to your saviour or prophet is a relationship between your self and something all powerful. Therefore when you are praying together it is as though a casting of individual threads to your personal heaven is a revelation to the self, not to the army, not to the workforce, not to the merchants, the bankers or even the holy ones we listen to preach their secret messages in sermons to the initiated. In all religions there seems to be a strata that pulls people up – spirituality is a wonderful thing, don’t get me wrong.

Having to take sides for your whole life is the commitment of belief. But the essence of individuality is the thing. It is the most important and elusive thing. Your thread can vibrate within a group but it can also find its own pattern. It does not matter. If we align beliefs into destructive paths then as a group we start to consume that which we have no right to, we take that we have to leave alone. The first lesson in The Book of Genesis was not to take the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge or die. Not to take the irreplaceable fruit means we must consider requirements of future life in our consumption.

The ways in which competing religions have interpreted this basic tenet of their own belief is astounding. The destruction of species is wanton, selfish and will result on our own death.

These words or wisdom are drowned by the clash of battle as we fight for our set of beliefs. But this fundamental exists. If we sow extinction, then we will become extinct. I am just not sure if today’s political science really gives a damn about the future.

The Greenhouse Treaty

On By nalexanderIn Climate Change, Economics, economy, Global WarmingLeave a comment

China and America have agreed to targets for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 for America, and 2030 for China. On the scale of problems, China is a significant player, with a much larger population competing for resources as economic growth strides into the greener parts, its lungs, pollution is rife, significant and horrendous to the increasingly aware population. It is they who are served by a mutual accord of the current world leaders. Both have already made history.

China’s pollution is evidence of a population growing too fast. Economic growth is reflective of a certain attitude to risk. Countries are examples to each other of how to do it or how to do it all wrong. Overheated economies destroy our habitats. The solution is not war, economic war or invasion. It is much easier than that.

According to World Bank figures for 2010 – 2011, developed nations afford to include the exponential cost of environmental damage, on the index the UK is about 20. China is 60. But compare that to Botswana, at 199. The problem is not China. It is the misuse of resources and the rape of land by too many competitive hungry humans. We have to evolve to stop killing our future.

We can do this by simply changing our thinking. Our economic system needs to evolve into one that is geared to reward economic contraction. Our religious beliefs need to encompass a new spiritual path that includes a respect for all life and ones descendants who are as much us as we are our ancestors.

Todays comments

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn economy, PoliticsLeave a comment

A few Disturbing Trends with our comments in The Guardian:

7 Aug 2014

Boris Johnson’s bid for parliamentary return in 2015 leaves Tories divided

The true blue conservative denies they are running until the finish line is in view, their competitors unprepared, relaxed and busy elsewhere can then make a huffing and puffing dash for the main prize.

Salmond rallies SNP backbenchers after independence debate

If the UK had a government which paid a little more than latent lip service to the parts of the country that are not London, I really wonder if the Scots would fight for independence. The popularity of this possibly economically difficult endeavour is an indictment of the Coalition and the unfair lot dealt to the many to enrich the very few.

Democracy will finally defeat that act of “mentalism”. But the question, what options do we really have? That question is the emotional argument that precedes this revolution.

Of course we may be “better together”, but the majority have to ask “better for whom?”

NIESR says economic recovery slowing after weaker manufacturing figures

I fear that like the previous government’s folly with the city, and the horrors of the 70s recessions, that it is “shock” that suddenly causes fragile recovery to be history and disaster to be the sounding board for electability. It is “old thinking” that is still leading economic planning and reactivity to timebombs that manufactures “heroes”.
In other words you are so brilliantly right. Open your business to the world. Dependence upon “economic growth” (based on the value of assets) is simply not getting us anywhere.

Sorry, George but increasing London property prices is not economic growth. You got to create industries, cause people to invest in and start new ventures, be willing to take risks.
Worrying about interest rates and the resale value of your nest egg stultifies imagination and reduces the rationale for business growth. It is not just investment bankers having dosh, it is the actual activity that seems to be faltering.

6 Aug 2014 – on Martin Rowson’s cartoon on Lady Warsi’s resignation

Being “right minded” seems to be a qualification. Or is that encoded tory propaganda or merely ukip splashing about in puddles?

Or that vacancy leading the Liberal Democrats, he may have to resign also.

…governments that pendulum swing between building and destroying systems – how much waste that does that create? Democracy under First Past the Post is truly the most inefficient system, especially when it is polarised between opposite sets of values. Proportional representation is more effective as they get to be far less adventurous as their mandate is less total.

Pollution

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn Climate Change, economy, pollutionLeave a comment

Pollution threatens all life. Man made pollution is the result of the industrial revolution and growth. Or it is the result of criminal expansionism?

Pollution is the addition of artificial byproducts from unclean industrial activity to a natural environment, too often with unforeseen consequences, or worse, known but hidden consequences. One of the pollutants we continue to add to the precious atmosphere is CO2. Unfortunately for us, there are many others. In the short term, we are most threatened by the consequences of CO2, but who knows what other accumulations of poisons in the food chain may cause breaks and starve us to death first.

For example, our chemical warfare on “pests” that seems to have a side effect of bee eradication, may be the end of us before lower Miami is fully under-water from sea rising with the melting ice-covers of Antartica and Greenland. That is ice above the land not, which when it is water will displace the coastline and reshape the British Isles. Is that how much we care about our countryside?

See also:
George Monbiot – Why we couldn’t care less about the natural world

Captain Sunshine

Corporate Taxation

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn capitalism, economyLeave a comment

If Google, Apple, Amazon and other multinational corporations can operate in the UK declaring all corporate profits in low-tax Luxembourg, then all companies that operate in the UK should operate out of a Luxembourg headquarters. They have been set a precedent, which if not legislated against fairly could cause a revolution of sorts, businesses becoming independent of the legislatures in which they operate. It effectively ends the concept of the corporation being a citizen of a nation.

To allow existing laws with all their loopholes to exist, the Government is allowing much capital dilution in the economy (inflation) but the unfair tax laws make repatriation of this capital unlikely and that allows the Government to hoodwink the population with “low inflation”.

Imagine, if all the tax-protected capital was to flood back into the UK at once, the inflation would be ridiculous. But by keeping UK interest rates low, by allowing this offshore sequestering of capital in tax havens, the Government uses QE without risking inflation showing up in the economy.

The Chancellor, the Government and the opposition are all guilty of short-term thinking. As they deflate the value of the currency by QE, they watch boatloads of tax protected funds being parked in offshore banks. So the money supply does not actually grow, but new investment is stimulated as those without can get loans. But the trick is on the general population as those who need such funding are paying larger margins than they should to borrow when the base rate is 0.5%.

Quite apart from these mechanisms of funding the destruction of existing retail businesses by competing with globalised companies means endemic unemployment. That alongside the enslavement of students by the charging of exorbitant fees to get a foot in the door of a career in an uncertain road, and you are witnessing the continuation of one of the most dangerous trends mankind has conceived. Economic racism.

Fracking Earthquakes

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn America, economy, EnergyLeave a comment

A series of earthquakes measuring up to 5.7 on the Richter scale, across Okalahoma, USA were triggered by injection of waste-water from fracking.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) issued a press release yesterday indicating that the magnitude 5.7 earthquake that struck Prague, Oklahoma in 2011 was unintentionally human-induced.

The USGS claims that the magnitude 5.0 earthquake triggered by waste-water injection the previous day “trigger[ed] a cascade of earthquakes, including a larger one, [which] has important implications for reducing the seismic risk from waste-water injection.”

Read article.

The NSA and the Economy

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn America, Barack Obama, economy, President ObamaLeave a comment

President Obama told key members of Congress on Thursday that he was “open to suggestions” for reforming the National Security Agency surveillance programs that have embroiled his administration in controversy. Guardian article

President Obama wants to pull back the NSA’s far too extensive phone tap of the world and internet.

It is uneconomic activity. American values are offended by this data collection. The rest of the world is now in fear of the totalitarian juggernaut overwhelming the world with its moral values. In the last seven years it has prevented one terrorist attack. Acts of love and kindness may have well prevented another, natural causes may have prevented another, and the predator assassinations of the Al Quaeda leadership may have prevented a larger number of terrorist attacks. But if you spent the billions this programme must be costing on education, health, foreign aid and development and energy you would save far more lives.

Yes aid has been argued against as the results of it may not always be progressive. The tax system has not always benefitted the individual or hospitals always saved lives, but water and food production internationally is about to become increasingly significant in the future wars which will not be about religion.

The NSA data collection of intimate details of our private lives is every bit as scary as terrorism. And this incredible investment could be driven into into energy renewables that could slow the fatal decline into the global weather catastrophe that will lead to mass starvation and sunken cities.

The secret of economic growth

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn economyLeave a comment

Economic arguments polarise into Right vs Left arguments.  How about recognition that our democracy allows change and adapting to the environment is what we need to do more of.  What are we, the British public, doing to export more?

Businesses need to take note that tax-haven economies are inherently unstable and can go belly-up.  Governments at least provide ballast.  Ultimately we will do better because the EU will cause economic growth.   If we build infrastructure it will be there to grow into, if we do not, growth is no longer possible.
(published as a comment in The Telegraph here)

What is wrong with the Government’s vision

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn economic regression, economyLeave a comment

In the Telegraph, Jeremy Warner states “Lack of growth has completely poleaxed the centre piece of the Government’s economic strategy — getting the deficit under control.”  and concludes “Osborne is often accused of cowardice and a lack of radicalism. He needs to be much bolder if he is ever to get to grips with the public finances, critics say. This may or may not be true, but the perhaps surprising reality is that if he is given the five years now needed to complete his plans, he will have brought about a remarkable transformation — some £24bn in selected tax cuts at the same time as a fiscal squeeze which reduces the size of the state as a proportion of GDP back to where it was before the last government began its madness. Brown’s public sector expansion will have been entirely reversed.”

Clearly, the starving off of all the grand schemes Brown initiated as a policy filter is not that well thought out.  Progress is progress, so some of what is now dust was causing growth that has now been lost.

Long term growth is caused by small businesses that can adapt to new conditions becoming large concerns making stuff that the world needs.  Of course stuff now can include intellectual capital realised from the results of ecommerce and other profound changes in the economic sphere that the UK is utterly failing to become adept with because investment is impossible, so companies continue to ride the same wave to shore.  But the tide is still going out because the Government has to create more dependency on introduced capital as it has utterly failed to stimulate sales.  The worst kind of manager shuts the door to preserve demand.

 Certainly, we should not follow the economic model of the bird that sells off its feathers to pay the interest on loans.  What we need is to foster new ways to fly.  British design and ideas are exported and shared with the world.  It is our task to continue our traditions, not burn books to keep warm.