ETHICS GOLDEN RULE: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

ECONOMICS GOLDEN RULE:

10/9/15

Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

Prophetic Pope Francis Market capitalism drives our global economy. Pope Francis’ June encyclical questions the ethics of this system, which is leading to (1) climate change and (2) an increasing gap between the rich and the poor.

DOES ECONOMICS TRUMP ETHICS ?

200 Page Encyclical Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home. June 2015

ECONOMIC IMBALNCE

• Belief in:• “Invisible Hand,” Adam Smith (1776), which

guided the pursuit of individual gain towards the public interest.

“The self-correcting power of the free market.” ( Alan Greenspan’s Laissez Faire Economics )

Ignoring:

• “Tragedy of the Commons,” William Forster Lloyd (1833), in which the pursuit of individual gain leads to abrogation of the common good.

Tragedy of the Commons William Forster Lloyd (1833), Garrett Hardin (1968) The pursuit of individual gain leads to abrogation of the common good.

Lloyd was familiar with herdsmen who all grazed their cattle on a commons. Each individual gained by adding more cows to his own herd. As each pursued his individual gain, the commons became overgrazed, resulting in the tragedy malnourished cows.

TRADEGY OF THE COMMONS

Individual desire to go everywhere gets you nowhere, while polluting.

SOLUTIONs1. Ethics2. Economic Regulation, Laws

Coal burning pollutes our common atmosphere for free.This is an economic benefit for electric utility companies and customers.The negative effects of pollution are shared by all.

Injustice of Coal Burning1. Fine particle pollution from U.S. power plants cuts short the lives of over 30,000 people/ year.

- Asthma attacks, cardiac problems and upper and lower respiratory problems associated with fine particles from power plants.

2. Deaths of many coal miners

- None from nuclear reactors in the US.

3. Increasing carbon doxide emissions are causing global warming with rising sea levels and increasing weather extremes.

Why Free Inhalers? Because COAL CARES. http://www.coalcares.org/index.html

Coal Cares™ is a brand-new initiative from Peabody Energy, the world's largest private-sector coal company, to reach out to American youngsters with asthma and to help them keep their heads high in the face of those who would treat them with less than full dignity. For kids who have no choice but to use an inhaler, Coal Cares™ lets them inhale with pride.Puff-Puff™ inhalers are available free to any family living within 200 miles of a coal plant, and each inhaler comes with a $10 coupon towards the cost of the asthma medication itself.

IMBALANCE FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES ARE 4 TIMES RENEWABLES

• Fossil fuels are reaping $550 billion a year in subsidies (International Energy Agency 2014)

• This is 4 times the $120 billion paid out in incentives for renewables including wind, solar and biofuels.

• Oil Change International estimates U.S. fossil fuel subsidies at $37.5 billion annually, including $21 billion in production and exploration subsidies.

NEED TO BALANCE LIBERTY & LAW

• “Invisible Hand,” Adam Smith (1776), which guided the pursuit of individual gain towards the public interest.

“The self-correcting power of the free market.” ( Alan Greenspan’s Laissez Faire Economics )

• “Tragedy of the Commons,” William Forster Lloyd (1833), in which the pursuit of individual gain leads to abrogation of the common good.

Liberty - Laissez Faire Economics,Balanced byLaw - Regulation, Constraint = JUSTICE “Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence is a constant struggle to find the right balance between liberty and responsibility.”

Tragedy of the 2009 Democratic Congress

• In 2009, the House of Representatives Passed the Markey-Waxman Bill, “Clean Energy & Security Act”

-Cap-and-Trade: Price on carbon emissions to economically favor wind, solar, and nuclear energy

• Environmental Tragedy: Senate did not pass it.

-Sen. Kerry (D) lost Republican Suppor

- Peabody Energy lobied agaj against it..

“We can not afford it”

Sweden, one of the few countries that tax carbon, has reduced its emissions by about twenty-three per cent in the past twenty-five years.

During that same period, its economy has grown by more than fifty-five per cent.

10/9/15

www.CitizensClimateLobby.org

Revenue neutral carbon fee with dividend.

CitizensClimagteLobby.org stated:

It was obvious from the answers that the candidates in the recent Republican Candidate Debate had little or no idea what Shultz was proposing in the way of a policy –

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said, “We’re not going to destroy our economy the way the left-wing government that we are under now wants to do.”

According to a study from Regional Economic Models, Inc., a carbon fee that is fully rebated to households will actually add 2.8 million jobs over a 20-year period.

GDP growth continues while greenhouse emissions decrease.

The Weight of the WorldCan Christiana Figueres persuade humanity to save itself?New Yorker August 24, 2015

23 Oct 2015. Hurricane Patricia approaching Mexico. Highest velocity winds recorded by satellite from

record-high ocean temperatures.

T24 Aug 2005. Tropical Storm ApproachesSouthern Florida.

28 Aug 2005. Katrina, Category 5 Hurricane, gained energetic winds of 175 mph due to the record high temperatures of the Gulf of Mexico.

28 Aug 2005. Katrina, Category 5, 175 mph winds. Absorbed energy from the record high temperatures of the Gulf of Mexico.

29 Aug 2005. Katrina causes $100Bs damage to New Orleans, LA

KATRINA: Tropical Storm to Hurricane

Physics Today, March 2012, pg. 31 NUMBER OF EVENTS WITH DAMAGE OVER $ 1 BILLION (NOAA)

2008: 9 2011: 14 Average since 1980: 3 to 4

• Since 1996 over $1 billion damage doubled compared with the previous 15-year period.

Hurricane Katrina 2005: $146 B

Hurricane Irene 2011: $15B Hurricane Sandy 2012: $50B

Prophetic Pope Francis Market capitalism drives our global economy. Pope Francis’ June encyclical questions the ethics of this system, which is leading to climate change and an increasing gap between the rich and the poor.

ECONOMICS TRUMPS ETHICS ? JUSTICE?

200 Page Encyclical Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home. June 2015

GOOD NEWS WISDOM:

HIGH GDP in the US

22

20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

GDP/Capita vs. Economic Freedom

Index of Economic Freedom

GD

P/C

apita

($K

)

LAW……………………………………………….…LIBERTY………ANARCHY

Optimum Balance

US

Canada

Congo

Niger

UK France Germany, Japan

S. Korea

CubaChina

Russia

HERITAGE FOUNDATIONINDEX OF ECONOMIC FREEDOM (2009)

Ten Economic Freedoms for United States91.9 Business Freedom 80.0 Investment Freedom 86.8 Trade Freedom 80.0 Financial Freedom 67.5 Fiscal Freedom 90.0 Property Rights 59.6 Government Size 72.0 Freedom from Corruption 84.0 Monetary Freedom 95.1 Labor Freedom 80.7 AVERAGE

BAD NEWS WISDOM:

ECONOMIC

INEQUALITY

Title of thepresentationInequality of capital

Thomas Piketty, Professor of Economics,

Paris School of Economics

19 December 2014

www.slideshare.net

27

This presentation is based upon Capital in the 21st century (Harvard University Press, March 2014) This book studies the global dynamics of income and wealth distribution since 18c in 20+ countries; I use historical data collected over the past 15 years with Atkinson, Saez, Postel-Vinay, Rosenthal, Alvaredo, Zucman, and 30+ others; I try to shift attention from rising income inequality to rising wealth inequality

•The book includes four parts:

Part 1. Income and capital Part 2. The dynamics of the capital/income ratio Part 3. The structure of inequalities Part 4. Regulating capital in the 21st century

•In this presentation I will present some results from Parts 2 & 3, focusing upon the long-run evolution of capital/income ratios and wealth concentration (all graphs and series are available on line: see http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/capital21c)

GINI INDEX IS A MEASURE OF ECONOMIC EQUALITYGINI = 0 Income completely equal GINI = 1 One person owns everything = INJUSTICE

Germany, Scandinavia, Japan, etc. have more income equality than the US.

20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

GDP/Capita vs. Economic Freedom

Index of Economic Freedom

GD

P/C

apita

($K

)

LAW……………………………………………….…LIBERTY………ANARCHY

WHY MY DAUGHTER MOVED TO THE UK & MY FRIEND’S SON TO CANADA.

US

Canada

Congo

Niger

UK France Germany, Japan

S. Korea

CubaChina

Russia

GINI INDEX IS A MEASURE OF ECONOMIC EQUALITYGINI = 0 Income completely equal GINI = 1 One person owns everything = INJUSTICE

Germany, Scandinavia, Japan, etc. have more income equality than the US.

31

32

33

Conclusions • The history of income and wealth inequality is always political, chaotic and unpredictable;

it involves national identities and sharp reversals; nobody can predict the reversals of the future

• The ideal solution: progressive wealth tax at the global scale, based upon automatic exchange of bank information

• Other solutions involve authoritarian political & capital controls (China, Russia..), or perpetual population growth (US), or inflation, or some mixture of all.

34

Reagan Tax Cuts70% to 28%

OUR NATIONAL DEBT INCREASED IN 1980

WWII Ends

Won Cold War

36

WWII POSTER

How we defeated Hitler Germany and Japan’s Rising Sun (1945).

Paid off its debt (1980).

Patriotism against enemies is theSocial Capitalthat bound us together.

January 2011

Investigation of the 2008 Economic Crash

BALANCE LIBERTY & LAW ECONOMICS & ETHICS

• “Invisible Hand,” Adam Smith (1776), which guided the pursuit of individual gain towards the public interest.

“The self-correcting power of the free market.” ( Alan Greenspan’s Laissez Faire Economics )

• “Tragedy of the Commons,” William Forster Lloyd (1833), in which the pursuit of individual gain leads to abrogation of the common good.

Liberty - Laissez Faire Economics,Balanced byLaw – “Progressive Wealth Taxes” “Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence is a constant struggle to find the right balance between liberty and responsibility.”

BALANCING SCIENCE & SPIRITECONOMICS & ETHICS

President Reagan’s Treasury Secretary George ShultzRevenue Neutral Carbon Fee & Dividend

CitizensClimateLobby.org

Paul H. Carr, Ph. D.Web page: www.MirrorOfNature.org

(3) Nov 2nd: Balancing medical science & near-death spirituality Are near-death experiences Proof of Heaven? This is the title of neurosurgeon Eban Alexander’s 2012 book. Neurologist Oliver Sachs, MD, author of Hallucinations, has a naturalistic, scientific explanation of Dr. Alexander’s near death experience. (4) Cosmology & Creation (5) Higgs Boson & God Particle

Does economics impact what we consider ethical?

Why was slavery not an ethical issue until the beginning of the industrial revolution? St. Paul wrote: "Slaves obey your earthly masters (Ephesians 6:5).”

For Karl Marx, economics was the basic determining factor of human history and of what is regarded as ethical.

45

Can our “free” economy survive the increasing gap between the rich and the poor? The MIT Press Book, "Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology & Unequal Riches," concludes that increasing income inequality is correlated with increased political polarization. Income inequality contributes to the revolutions sweeping the Arab world.

“The Answer My Friends is Blowing in the Wind”

Growing in the United States– In the last 5 years, average annual growth rate of 22%– In both 2005 and 2006, the second -largest source of newgeneration capacity in the US trailing to natural gas– Provides less than 2% of total electricity consumption– Analysis for 20% energy saturation is underway

Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change.More Important than Pope Francis’ Encyclical?

The Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change was launched by leaders from 20 countries at the Islamic Climate Change Symposium in Istanbul on August 17-18, 2015.

The Declaration presents the moral case, based on Islamic teachings, for the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims and people of all faiths worldwide to take urgent climate action to replace fossil fuels with renewables. There a 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

Muslim countries in the Persian Gulf are major oil producers & largest per-capita emitters.

Indonesia, which is predominantly Muslim, is among the top ten carbon emitters if land-use change and forests are taken into account.

Muslim countries, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, are also threatened acutely by more-frequent periods of extreme heat and floods. Bangladesh, whose population of 159 million is living 1 -3 feet above sea level, has installed more than 3.5-million solar home systems in the country's rural areas. Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates has, in recent years, grown into a hot spot for solar research.

Pope Francis Encyclical

25. Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.

St. Francis helps us to see that an integral ecology calls for openness to categories which transcend the language of mathematics and biology, and take us to the heart of what it is to be human.

If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs.

By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.

Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home. Here I want to recognize, encourage and thank all those striving in countless ways to guarantee the protection of the home which we share. Particular appreciation is owed to those who tirelessly seek to resolve the tragic effects of environmental degradation on the lives of the world’s poorest. Young people demand change. They wonder how anyone can claim to be building a better future without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded.

14. I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.

There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected.

Economic powers continue to justify the current global system where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment.

VII. A VARIETY OF OPINIONS60. Finally, we need to acknowledge that different approaches and lines of thought have emerged regarding this situation and its possible solutions. At one extreme, we find those who doggedly uphold the myth of progress and tell us that ecological problems will solve themselves simply with the application of new technology and without any need for ethical considerations or deep change. At the other extreme are those who view men and women and all their interventions as no more than a threat, jeopardizing the global ecosystem, and consequently the presence of human beings on the planet should be reduced and all forms of intervention prohibited. Viable future scenarios will have to be generated between these extremes, since there is no one path to a solution. This makes a variety of proposals possible, all capable of entering into dialogue with a view to developing comprehensive solutions.

61. On many concrete questions, the Church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion; she knows that honest debate must be encouraged among experts, while respecting divergent views. But we need only take a frank look at the facts to see that our common home is falling into serious disrepair.