EUA na Bancarrota?

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Cabeça de Martelo

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #30 em: Agosto 29, 2012, 02:43:32 pm »
America’s Descent into Poverty ~ Paul Craig Roberts

The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, and environmentally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born. In this article I will deal with America’s economic collapse. In subsequent articles, i will deal with other aspects of American collapse.

Economically, America has descended into poverty. As Peter Edelman says, “Low-wage work is pandemic.” Today in “freedom and democracy” America, “the world’s only superpower,” one fourth of the work force is employed in jobs that pay less than $22,000, the poverty line for a family of four. Some of these lowly-paid persons are young college graduates, burdened by education loans, who share housing with three or four others in the same desperate situation. Other of these persons are single parents only one medical problem or lost job away from homelessness.

Others might be Ph.D.s teaching at universities as adjunct professors for $10,000 per year or less. Education is still touted as the way out of poverty, but increasingly is a path into poverty or into enlistments into the military services.

Edelman, who studies these issues, reports that 20.5 million Americans have incomes less than $9,500 per year, which is half of the poverty definition for a family of three.

There are six million Americans whose only income is food stamps. That means that there are six million Americans who live on the streets or under bridges or in the homes of relatives or friends. Hard-hearted Republicans continue to rail at welfare, but Edelman says, “basically welfare is gone.”

In my opinion as an economist, the official poverty line is long out of date. The prospect of three people living on $19,000 per year is farfetched. Considering the prices of rent, electricity, water, bread and fast food, one person cannot live in the US on $6,333.33 per year. In Thailand, perhaps, until the dollar collapses, it might be done, but not in the US.

As Dan Ariely (Duke University) and Mike Norton (Harvard University) have shown empirically, 40% of the US population, the 40% less well off, own 0.3%, that is, three-tenths of one percent, of America’s personal wealth. Who owns the other 99.7%? The top 20% have 84% of the country’s wealth. Those Americans in the third and fourth quintiles–essentially America’s middle class–have only 15.7% of the nation’s wealth. Such an unequal distribution of income is unprecedented in the economically developed world.

In my day, confronted with such disparity in the distribution of income and wealth, a disparity that obviously poses a dramatic problem for economic policy, political stability, and the macro management of the economy, Democrats would have demanded corrections, and Republicans would have reluctantly agreed.

But not today. Both political parties whore for money.

The Republicans believe that the suffering of poor Americans is not helping the rich enough. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are committed to abolishing every program that addresses needs of what Republicans deride as “useless eaters.”

The “useless eaters” are the working poor and the former middle class whose jobs were offshored so that corporate executives could receive multi-millions of dollars in performance pay compensation and their shareholders could make millions of dollars on capital gains. While a handful of executives enjoy yachts and Playboy playmates, tens of millions of Americans barely get by.

In political propaganda, the “useless eaters” are not merely a burden on society and the rich. They are leeches who force honest taxpayers to pay for their many hours of comfortable leisure enjoying life, watching sports events, and fishing in trout streams, while they push around their belongings in grocery baskets or sell their bodies for the next MacDonald burger.

The concentration of wealth and power in the US today is far beyond anything my graduate economic professors could image in the 1960s. At four of the world’s best universities that I attended, the opinion was that competition in the free market would prevent great disparities in the distribution of income and wealth. As I was to learn, this belief was based on an ideology, not on reality.

Congress, acting on this erroneous belief in free market perfection, deregulated the US economy in order to create a free market. The immediate consequence was resort to every previous illegal action to monopolize, to commit financial and other fraud, to destroy the productive basis of American consumer incomes, and to redirect income and wealth to the one percent.

The “democratic” Clinton administration, like the Bush and Obama administrations, was suborned by free market ideology. The Clinton sell-outs to Big Money essentially abolished Aid to Families with Dependent Children. But this sell-out of struggling Americans was not enough to satisfy the Republican Party. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to cut or abolish every program that cushions poverty-stricken Americans from starvation and homelessness.

Republicans claim that the only reason Americans are in need is because the government uses taxpayers’ money to subsidize Americans who are unwilling to work. As Republicans see it, while we hard-workers sacrifice our leisure and time with our families, the welfare rabble enjoy the leisure that our tax dollars provide them.

This cock-eyed belief, on top of corporate CEOs maximizing their incomes by offshoring the middle class jobs of millions of Americans, has left Americans in poverty and cities, counties, states, and the federal government without a tax base, resulting in bankruptcies at the state and local level and massive budget deficits at the federal level that threaten the value of the dollar and its role as reserve currency.

The economic destruction of America benefitted the mega-rich with multi-billions of dollars with which to enjoy life and its high-priced accompaniments wherever the mega-rich wish. Meanwhile, away from the French Rivera, Homeland Security is collecting sufficient ammunition to keep dispossessed Americans under control.

 :shock:
7. Todos os animais são iguais mas alguns são mais iguais que os outros.

 

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P44

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #31 em: Março 02, 2013, 10:28:51 am »
Emergência financeira declarada em Detroit

À beira da bancarrota, a cidade do estado do Michigan aguarda a mais que provável nomeação de um administrador estatal externo, que avaliará se há solução para os seus graves problemas financeiros.

Mafalda Ganhão

21:18 Sexta feira, 1 de março de 2013

O governador do estado do Michigan declarou oficialmente a situação de "emergência financeira" em Detroit. O anúncio feito hoje por Rick Snyder era esperado desde  que foi tornada pública a avaliação às contas da cidade, há cerca de uma semana, revelando uma falta de liquidez à beira de atingir 100 milhões de dólares (mais de 76 milhões de euros).

A decisão abre agora um período de dez dias, prazo dado à câmara municipal para recorrer. O cenário mais provável é, contudo, a entrada em cena de um administrador estatal externo, que tome conta das finanças de Detroit, podendo mesmo vir a declarar a sua falência, caso conclua que os problemas orçamentais em causa são insolúveis.

A cidade sofre as consequências da acentuada quebra populacional registada nos últimos anos - cerca de 25% menos habitantes de 2000 a 2010 - até ficar abaixo dos 750 mil de contribuintes, número que serviu de base às projeções de receita.

Também as contínuas crises da indústria automóvel, agravadas em 2009 com as quebras da General Motors e da Chrysler contribuíram para o descalabro.

É certo que nos anos 1990, com a abertura de vários casinos, o desenvolvimento imobiliário e o aparecimento de novos estádios desportivos, as contas melhoraram um pouco, mas uma gestão autárquica desastrosa, entre 2002 e 2008, inverteu dramaticamente o caminho da recuperação. Acusado de corrupção e escândalos vários, o presidente Kwame Kilpatrick acabaria mesmo na prisão.

- See more at: http://expresso.sapo.pt/emergencia-fina ... qDsPy.dpuf
"[Os portugueses são]um povo tão dócil e tão bem amestrado que até merecia estar no Jardim Zoológico"
-Dom Januário Torgal Ferreira, Bispo das Forças Armadas
 

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HSMW

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #32 em: Julho 19, 2013, 08:07:01 pm »
https://www.youtube.com/user/HSMW/videos

"Tudo pela Nação, nada contra a Nação."
 

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Cabeça de Martelo

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #33 em: Setembro 27, 2013, 12:38:14 pm »
Estados Unidos em risco de bancarrota


Jacob Lew, o secretário do Tesouro, garante que os Estados Unidos da América podem entrar em incumprimento já em outubro.


Uma contagem decrescente para um incumprimento (bancarrota) por parte dos Estados Unidos da América pode estar em marcha se a tensão política entre republicanos e democratas prosseguir no Congresso em Washington.

Os representantes republicanos decidiram aproveitar politicamente dois momentos chave - o debate orçamental para 2014 e o aumento do teto da dívida federal no último trimestre - para colocaram um conjunto de reivindicações políticas que extravasam as questões ligadas ao controlo da dívida federal e à dieta nos gastos da Administração Obama. Os republicanos dominam a Câmara dos Representantes, a câmara baixa do Congresso.

Muitos analistas insistem que, no último minuto, compromissos serão encontrados, mas os "estragos" na economia norte-americana e nos mercados financeiros globais são de difícil previsão. Alguns analistas alertam que o atual bloqueio republicano deve ser levado a sério e que o risco político é elevado, como o admitiu a própria Reserva Federal na sua reunião recente.

As datas-chave na contagem decrescente para o risco de um default - palavra usada pelo secretário do Tesouro Jacob Lew na sua missiva ao presidente da Câmara de Representantes, o republicano John Boehner - prendem-se, num primeiro momento, com a aprovação ou não de uma resolução de continuação do funcionamento do governo federal a partir de 1 de outubro, e, num segundo momento, com a necessidade de autorizar o aumento do défice federal até 17 de outubro para cumprir com obrigações federais aprovadas.

O limite para evitar uma suspensão de serviços federais não essenciais - o que é designado por shutdown - já na próxima terça-feira é a meia-noite de dia 30 de setembro. Os investidores vão estar de olhos postos no que se passar em Washington hoje, durante o fim de semana e na segunda-feira.

Leia mais na edição de 27 de setembro do Expresso



Ler mais: http://expresso.sapo.pt/estados-unidos- ... z2g5mSdeR1
7. Todos os animais são iguais mas alguns são mais iguais que os outros.

 

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Cabeça de Martelo

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #34 em: Outubro 01, 2013, 04:09:30 pm »
EUA encerram serviços públicos por tempo indeterminado


Falta de acordo entre republicanos e democratas sobre a reforma da saúde deixa o Governo dos EUA sem dinheiro em caixa e serviços públicos encerrados.



 
Um milhão de funcionários de agências governamentais norte-americanas ficarão a partir de hoje de licença sem vencimento forçada, por tempo indeterminado, e os serviços onde trabalham serão encerrados, noticia a Reuters.

A ausência de acordo entre democratas e republicanos relativo à aprovação das dotações para que o Governo federal possa levar por diante a reforma da saúde (Obamacare), que o Presidente Barack Obama recusa protelar, encerrará a partir de hoje, e pela primeira vez em 17 anos, parques nacionais, museus e monumentos, projetos de investigação científica, entre muitos outros serviços.

Milhares de controladores de tráfego aéreo, guardas prisionais e fronteiriços, terão de continuar a trabalhar sem direito a vencimento. Melhor sorte tiveram os militares no ativo, guarda costeira e os civis contratados para apoio na Defesa e Segurança Nacional, que viram Obama assinar uma lei que permite o pagamento dos seus vencimentos durante a paragem do Governo federal.

No entanto, cerca de 400 mil trabalhadores civis do Pentágono, o ministério da Defesa dos EUA, localizado em Washington, foram dispensados.

Já a NASA fica em serviços mínimos. Apenas 600 dos 18 mil funcionários da Agência Espacial norte-americana ficam não seguem para casa. Terão por missão garantir a segurança das instalações e o suporte aos seus astronautas da Estação Espacial Internacional.

A ordem de encerramento partiu na noite de segunda-feira da diretora-geral do orçamento da Casa Branca: "As agências devem agora executar planos de paragem ordenada devido à ausência de dotações."

Sylvia Mathews Burwell apelou ainda ao Congresso, onde os republicanos dominam a Câmara dos Representantes, enquanto os democratas controlam o Senado, para agir rapidamente e aprovar uma lei que permita ao Governo Federal funcionar em pleno.

"Manter o Governo em funcionamento não é uma concessão ao Presidente. Manter serviços vitais em funcionamento e centenas de milhares a trabalhar não é algo que de dê à parte contrária. É uma responsabilidade nossa", afirmou ontem à noite Barack Obama.



Ler mais: http://expresso.sapo.pt/eua-encerram-se ... z2gU0E5uQK
7. Todos os animais são iguais mas alguns são mais iguais que os outros.

 

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FoxTroop

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #35 em: Outubro 01, 2013, 08:55:58 pm »
Preocupante para dentro dos USA, mas sinal da verdadeira derrocada que espreita. A partir de meados deste mês, os USA poderão entrar em incumprimento com os credores internacionais a qualquer momento. Quero ver depois como é que a coisa fica.
 

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overlord

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #36 em: Outubro 01, 2013, 10:11:42 pm »
o que acho engraçado no meio disto tudo é as agênciais de rating dizerem que ta tudo bem. enfim
 

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Edu

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #37 em: Outubro 14, 2013, 03:43:00 pm »
Citação de: "overlord"
o que acho engraçado no meio disto tudo é as agênciais de rating dizerem que ta tudo bem. enfim

Aqui se vê a importância de a União Europeia ter a sua própria agência de rating, tanto para fazer face às sobrevalorizações da economia americana como para a subvalorizações feitas pelas agências às suas próprias instituições.

Como pode estar toda a economia global refém de agências de rating que dão classificação AAA a bancos que uma semana depois declaram falência e a um estado que nem sequer paga aos seus próprios trabalhadores?
 

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Cabeça de Martelo

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #38 em: Abril 08, 2014, 09:58:13 am »
7. Todos os animais são iguais mas alguns são mais iguais que os outros.

 

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Cabeça de Martelo

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #39 em: Março 28, 2015, 05:36:44 pm »
7. Todos os animais são iguais mas alguns são mais iguais que os outros.

 

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NVF

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #40 em: Abril 19, 2015, 08:44:52 pm »
E enquanto a dívida pública norte-americana continua a crescer, a China perdeu o primeiro lugar de detentor estrangeiro dessa dívida. O maior detentor de dívida pública americana é agora um país com o qual, em tempos, tivemos uma relação muito próxima.  :mrgreen:
 
http://www.treasury.gov/ticdata/Publish/mfh.txt
Talent de ne rien faire
 

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Cabeça de Martelo

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #41 em: Dezembro 30, 2016, 05:40:10 pm »
7. Todos os animais são iguais mas alguns são mais iguais que os outros.

 

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Cabeça de Martelo

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #42 em: Julho 28, 2018, 11:31:33 am »
Subsidies Won’t Fix the Permanent Damage Trump’s Tariffs Have Done to America’s Farmers

By WILLIAM REINSCH July 25, 2018~

On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced a $12 billion relief package for American farmers to compensate them for the damage done by the tariffs President Trump has imposed. The administration is dodging several bullets with how it designed the program, but there is a fundamental irony here: using taxpayers’ money to compensate people for a problem the administration created.

With this program, no additional legislation or Congressional approval is required. It uses existing programs under the umbrella of the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), which helps farmers deal with the consequences of crop cycles and unexpected weather disasters. In addition, the program appears to fit within the limitations of U.S. agriculture subsidies maintained by the World Trade Organization, which should forestall litigation there, or at least allow the U.S. to prevail if challenged.


However, this is a distortion of the CCC’s purpose. It also appears that if all $12 billion is spent, it will more than double the CCC’s annual outlay. It would still be within the borrowing ceiling, but could limit funds needed for other purposes, like responding to weather disasters or non-trade-related price declines.

In addition, while the program may survive WTO litigation, it could still face retaliation from foreign countries arguing that the payments are subsidies, which would give our farmers an advantage in the marketplace. That’s a stretch, but the president has already moved the trading system into a world where neither reality nor rules matter, so we should not be surprised when other countries respond in kind.

And let’s not forget that this is a short-term measure to deal with what is likely to be a long-term problem. The program is intended to deal with the current crop year, and there is no intention at this point to extend it. This is probably based on the president’s view that if you hit people hard enough with tariffs, they’ll fold, give him what he wants, and he can remove the tariffs and restore farmers’ overseas markets. But any farmer who exports will tell you that is simply wrong. Foreign markets are painstakingly developed, relationship-based, and, once lost, cannot simply be restored by flicking a switch and turning off the tariffs. The damage done so far is going to last far beyond the current crop year and may well be permanent.

Even if those markets could be restored if the tariffs were removed, there is not much evidence to suggest they’re going away anytime soon. So far, there is not much in the president’s win column on trade. NAFTA talks are stalled; Chinese talks are currently non-existent; and the only negotiation he’s completed—with Korea—may unravel over the threat of additional auto tariffs. That means we are in this for the long haul with likely permanent consequences.

Farmers are making clear this is not what they want. They want free trade and open markets. A cynic would say they’ll probably complain and take the money anyway, but they won’t be happy about it, which means the president may not get the political bump he is hoping for.

The irony of this remains inescapable. The president created this problem. The solution to a bad policy is to remove the policy. Instead, he is compounding the error by adding another bad policy on top of the first, and sending the bill to the nation’s taxpayers—a bill that is likely to extend beyond the first year. It also raises, again, the irony of the Republican Party’s position. It has long stood for free trade, free markets, fiscal conservatism, and reduced government spending. Yet here it is supporting a president who has abandoned all those principles. Historians will debate whether the party has lost its mind or its soul—or both.

William Reinsch holds the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is also a trade expert on the podcast The Trade Guys.

http://fortune.com/2018/07/25/12-billion-in-aid-to-farmers-trump-tariffs/
« Última modificação: Julho 28, 2018, 11:35:54 am por Cabeça de Martelo »
7. Todos os animais são iguais mas alguns são mais iguais que os outros.

 

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Cabeça de Martelo

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #43 em: Fevereiro 09, 2019, 05:23:16 pm »
There’s now an official Green New Deal. Here’s what’s in it.

A close look at the fights it picks and the fights it avoids.
By David Roberts


Markey and Ocasio-Cortez hold a news conference to unveil their Green New Deal resolution.

The Green New Deal has become an incredibly hot item on the political agenda, but to date, it has remained somewhat ill defined. It’s a broad enough concept that everyone can read their aspirations into it, which has been part of its strength, but it has also left discussion in something of a fog, since no one’s quite sure what they’re arguing about.

On Thursday, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced a Green New Deal resolution that lays out the goals, aspirations, and specifics of the program in a more definitive way. This is as close as there is to an “official” Green New Deal — at last, something to argue about.

There will be lots to say in the days to come about the politics of all this. (In the meantime, read Ella Nilsen’s piece.) For instance, it is interesting that Markey, a living symbol of 2008-era Democratic thinking on climate change (and the leader of the old climate committee), is lending his imprimatur to this more urgent and radical iteration.

But for now, I just want to share a few initial impressions after reading through the short document a few times.

It’s worth noting just what a high-wire act the authors of this resolution are attempting. It has to offer enough specifics to give it real shape and ambition, without overprescribing solutions or prejudging differences over secondary questions. It has to please a diverse range of interest groups, from environmental justice to labor to climate, without alienating any of them. It has to stand up to intense scrutiny (much of it sure to be bad faith), with lots of people gunning for it from both the right and center.

And, of course, it eventually has to give birth to real legislation.

Given all those demands, the resolution does a remarkably good job of threading the needle. It is bold and unmistakably progressive, matched to the problem as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, while avoiding a few needless fights and leaving room for plenty of debate over priorities and policy tools.

The resolution consists of a preamble, five goals, 14 projects, and 15 requirements. The preamble establishes that there are two crises, a climate crisis and an economic crisis of wage stagnation and growing inequality, and that the GND can address both.

The goals — achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, creating jobs, providing for a just transition, securing clean air and water — are broadly popular. The projects — things like decarbonizing electricity, transportation, and industry, restoring ecosystems, upgrading buildings and electricity grids — are necessary and sensible (if also extremely ambitious).

There are a few items down in the requirements that might raise red flags (more on those later), but given the long road ahead, there will be plenty of time to sort them out. Overall, this is about as strong an opening bid as anyone could have asked for.

Now let’s take a closer look.

The Green New Deal resolution features 2 big progressive priorities
From a progressive point of view, the discussion over climate change in the US has always been overly skewed toward technologies and markets. (The term of art is “neoliberalism.”)

I have been guilty of this myself. Economics and technology are considered serious topics in the US, a ticket to being heard and acknowledged by the political mainstream, and there is a subtle, tidal pressure to hew to those subjects, at risk of being relegated to the status of activist or, worse yet, ideologue. (As though neoliberalism is not an ideology.)

The resurgent left is done with all that.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with technologies or markets, as long as they remain servants, not masters. It’s just that in the US, those subjects have tended to occlude deeper and more urgent considerations (like justice) and exclude a wide range of policy instruments (like public investment).

It is for the progressive movement to stand up for those priorities, and that’s what the GND resolution does. We’ll take them in turn.

1) Justice

Ordinary people matter. Emissions matter, yes. Costs and money matter. Technologies and policies matter. But they all matter secondarily, via their effects on ordinary people. The role of progressive politics, if it amounts to anything, is to center the safety, health, and dignity of ordinary people.

That means that justice — or as it’s often called, “environmental justice,” as though it’s some boutique subgenre — must be at the heart of any plan to address climate change. The simple fact is that climate change will hit what the resolution calls “frontline and vulnerable communities” (who have contributed least to the problem) hardest. And attempts to transition away from fossil fuels threaten communities that remain tied to the fossil fuel economy.

Frontline and vulnerable communities stand to get it coming and going, from the problem and from the solutions. And unlike big energy companies pursuing growth, unlike idle billionaires fascinated with new tech, unlike banks and financial institutions seeking out new income streams, unlike incumbent industries fat from decades of subsidies, frontline and vulnerable communities do not have the means to fund campaigns and hire expensive lobbyists. They do not have the means to make their voice heard in the scrum of politics.

That’s why progressives exist: to amplify the voices of those without power (a class that includes future generations).

Accordingly, in the resolution’s preamble — the part with all the whereas this and whereas that — there are three statements focused on climate damages and emissions and four focused, in one way or another, on justice.

Of the resolution’s five goals, three are focused on justice. (For example: “promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression to frontline and vulnerable communities.”)

Of the 12 GND projects, three, including the very first, are focused on community-level resilience and development. And something like two-thirds of the GND requirements, depending on how you count, direct political power and public investment down to the state, local, and worker level, safeguarding environmental and labor standards and prioritizing family-wage jobs.

The resolution makes clear that justice is a top progressive priority. It is fashionable for centrists and some climate wonks to dismiss things like wage standards as tertiary, a way of piggybacking liberal goals onto the climate fight. But progressives don’t see it that way. In a period of massive, rapid disruption, the welfare of the people involved is not tertiary.

2) Investment

Neoliberalism has also made old-fashioned public investment something of a taboo. The GND goes directly at it — public investment aimed at creating jobs is central to the project.

The preamble notes that “the Federal Government-led mobilizations during World War II and the New Deal era created the greatest middle class that the US has ever seen” and frames the GND as “a historic opportunity to create millions of good, high-wage jobs in the United States.”

Creating jobs is the second of the five goals; investment in “US infrastructure and industry” is the third. Of the GND projects, investment in “community-defined projects and strategies” to increase resilience is the first; repairing and upgrading infrastructure is the second.

Of the GND requirements, the very first is “providing and leveraging, in a way that ensures that the public receives appropriate ownership stakes and returns on investment, adequate capital (including through community grants, public banks, and other public financing), technical expertise, supporting policies, and other forms of assistance to communities, organizations, Federal, State, and local government agencies, and businesses working on the Green New Deal mobilization.”

Also in the requirements: funding education and job training for frontline communities in transition; investing in research and development; and investing in community ownership and resilience.

The Green New Deal resolution smartly avoids a few fights
There some internecine fights within the broad community of climate hawks that are best left to other venues, in order to keep the coalition behind a GND as broad and small-c catholic as possible. This resolution deftly avoids several of those fights.

1) Paying for it

The question of how to pay for the many public investments called for in the GND is still a bit of a political minefield. There are centrist Democrats who still believe in the old PAYGO rules, keeping a “balanced budget” within a 10-year window. There are Democrats who think deficit fears have been exaggerated and there’s nothing wrong with running a deficit to drive an economic transition. And there are Democrats who have gone full Modern Monetary Theory, which is way too complicated to explain here but amounts to the notion that, short of inflation, the level of the deficit is effectively irrelevant, as long as we’re getting the economy we want.


That discussion is just getting underway, and the better part of valor is to do what the GND resolution does: say nothing about it. Leave it for later.

2) Clean versus renewable energy

Many, probably most, climate hawks would prefer a future in which all electricity is provided by renewable energy. (I am among them.) But there is good-faith disagreement about whether 100 percent renewables is realistic or economical in the 10-year time frame.

Many, probably most energy analysts believe that renewables will need to be supplemented with nuclear power or fossil fuels with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), but some lefty environmental groups pushed for the GND to explicitly prohibit them.

As I argued earlier, that would have caused a completely unnecessary fight. The resolution wisely avoids taking that route.

Instead, it calls for the US to “meet 100 percent of our power demand through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”

Easy. Now renewables advocates can go right on advocating for renewables, nuclear fans can go right on advocating for nuclear, and they can continue fighting it out on Twitter. But their fight doesn’t need to muck up the GND. The GND targets carbon emissions, which is the right target for a broad programmatic outline.

3) Carbon pricing

Carbon pricing — carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems — is also the source of much agita within the climate hawk community. The need to price carbon has practically been climate orthodoxy for the past few decades, but lately there’s been something of a lefty backlash.

Some have taken the (sensible) position that climate pricing has been rather fetishized, that it may not be the smartest political priority in all cases, and that other policy instruments with more proven records are equally important. Some have taken the (silly) position that carbon pricing is bad or counterproductive in and of itself and pushed to have it excluded from the GND.


The resolution doesn’t take a position. It merely says that the GND must involve “accounting for the true cost of emissions.” If you’re a carbon pricing fan (as I am), you can read pricing into that. But there are other ways to read it too.

Pricing advocates probably would have liked something a little more muscular there, but in the end, I think the instinct — to avoid the fight entirely — is the right one. The struggle over how or whether to prioritize pricing instruments can come later; it doesn’t need to be settled in advance of getting people on board with the GND.

4) Supply-side policy

Lately, lots of climate activists have been pushing to directly restrict the supply and distribution of fossil fuels — at the mine, well, or import terminal — with an eye toward phasing out fossil fuels entirely. “Keep it in the ground,” as the slogan goes.

This is the leading edge of the climate fight, out ahead of where labor and most moderates are. Including it in the GND probably would have sparked some defections.

The GND resolution doesn’t touch the subject, other than calling for transition assistance for communities losing fossil fuel jobs. And it calls on the US to “achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions,” which theoretically allows for some fossil fuel combustion coupled with carbon removal.

The keep-it-in-the-ground crowd is in the same position as the all-renewables crowd: They may feel some initial disappointment that their perspective was not reflected in the resolution, but they can take comfort in the fact that it was not excluded either. The resolution simply slates that fight as something to take place within the broad GND coalition, rather than making it part of the price of membership.

All four of these omissions or elisions — these fights postponed — signal, to me, a movement that is capable of reining in its more vigorous ideological impulses in the name of building the broadest possible left coalition behind an ambitious climate solution. That bodes well.

The Green New Deal resolution omits a few key, wonky policies
There are a few things I would have liked to see feature more prominently in the resolution. They are somewhat nerdy, but important in climate policy.

1) Density and public space

Just about the only urban-focused element of the GND resolution is tucked into the transportation section, calling for “investment in zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing, clean, affordable, and accessible public transit, and high-speed rail.”

That’s it. Boo.

Creating dense urban areas with ample public spaces and multimodal transportation options — deprioritizing private automobiles and reducing overall automobile traffic — serves multiple progressive goals.

It tackles the next big climate challenge, which is cars. It reduces urban air pollution, urban noise, and the urban heat island effect, while increasing physical activity and social contact, all of which improves the physical and psychological health of urban communities.

It addresses the housing crisis that is crippling many growing cities, pricing young people, poor people, students, and longtime residents out of walkable urban cores.

And, if you will forgive some dreamy speculation, a little more public space might just generate a sense of community and social solidarity to counteract the segregation, atomization, isolation, and mutual distrust that cars and suburbs have exacerbated.

I get that GND proponents are spooked about being seen as anti-rural, which is why these kinds of plans from the left always include education, training, and transition assistance for rural communities hurt by decarbonization.

And that’s great. But they should also remember that their core demographics live in cities and are engaged in urban issues. Cities are central to any vision of 21st-century sustainability. They deserve pride of place in a GND.

2) Electrification

It is widely acknowledged in the climate policy community that deep decarbonization will involve rapid and substantial electrification. We know how to decarbonize electricity grids — so we need to get everything we can onto the grid.

That means two big things in particular.


First, the US vehicle fleet needs to be electrified as fast as practicably possible. The resolution’s “investment in zero-emission vehicle infrastructure” hints at this, but scarcely conveys the needed scale and speed.

Second, the millions upon millions of buildings in the US that use natural gas for heat need to find a zero-carbon alternative, and quickly. There are some zero-carbon liquid substitute fuels on the horizon, but for the time being, the best way we know to decarbonize HVAC (heating, ventilation, and cooling) is to rip out all those millions of furnaces and replace them with electric heat pumps. That’s a big, big job that will create a ton of work and directly involve millions of people’s homes and businesses.

The GND resolution would “upgrade all existing U.S. buildings and build new buildings, to achieve maximal energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability.” Theoretically that could imply electrification, but I’d like to see it called out.

The Green New Deal resolution has a few, er, aspirational inclusions
As I said, most of the resolution consists of goals and policies that anyone who takes climate change seriously will find necessary. But down toward the bottom of the list of projects, the resolution really lets its hair down and gets funky. Readers who make it that far into the document will find some eyebrow-raising doozies.

Like No. 8: “guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and disability leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.” Heyo! There’s that job guarantee.

Or No. 9: “strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain free of coercion, intimidation, and harassment.” A full-on right to unionize, okay.

11: “enacting and enforcing trade rules, procurement standards, and border adjustments with strong labor and environmental protections to stop the transfer of jobs and pollution overseas and to grow domestic manufacturing in the United States.” And there’s a liberal trade regime.

14: “ensuring a commercial environment where every businessperson is free from unfair competition and domination by domestic or international monopolies.” All right, we’re going after monopolies too.

And just to fill in the remaining gaps, 15: “providing all members of society with high-quality health care, affordable, safe and adequate housing, economic security, and access to clean water, air, healthy and affordable food, and nature.” That is quite the addendum!

If you’re keeping score at home, the Green New Deal now involves a federal job guarantee, the right to unionize, liberal trade and monopoly policies, and universal housing and health care.

Starting strong, bargaining down
This is just a resolution, not legislation. (I’m pretty sure providing universal housing and health care would require a couple of bills at least.) So I’m not really sure how literally these latter requirements are meant to be read, or how literally those who sign on to the GND will take them.

If they’re taken literally, then everyone who signs on should get a welcome letter from the Democratic Socialists of America. If they are taken as an aspirational list of Good Things, as I suspect they will be (especially given Markey’s involvement), then many arguments will remain to be had about just what a GND endorsement means.

But it definitely means something.

...

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/2/7/18211709/green-new-deal-resolution-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-markey
« Última modificação: Fevereiro 09, 2019, 05:23:40 pm por Cabeça de Martelo »
7. Todos os animais são iguais mas alguns são mais iguais que os outros.

 

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Re: EUA na Bancarrota?
« Responder #44 em: Março 16, 2019, 03:36:10 pm »
Guerra comercial custou 7,8 mil milhões de dólares à economia norte-americana

Um estudo levado a cabo por economistas de reputadas universidades norte-americanas calculou o custo das guerras comerciais impostas por Donald Trump. Em 2018 as importações norte-americanas caíram 31,5% e as exportações recuaram 11%.

A guerra comercial levada a cabo pelo presidente dos Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, custou à economia norte-americana 7,8 mil milhões de dólares (6,82 mil milhões de euros).


Segundo a agência Reuters, as contas foram feitas por um consórcio de economistas das principais universidades norte-americanas que elaboraram um relatório publicado pelo Gabinete Nacional de Economia de investigação (National Bureau of Economic research).

Os autores do relatório, que analisaram o impacto no curto-prazo das medidas protecionistas impostas por Trump, concluíram que as importações norte-americanas caíram 31,5% e que as exportações recuaram 11%. Os custos anuais dos produtores e consumidores também aumentaram para 68,8 mil milhões de dólares devido ao aumento dos preços dos bens importados para os EUA.

“Depois de se levar em consideração o aumento das receitas das tarifas aduaneiras e dos ganhos dos produtores nacionais devido ao aumento dos preços, a perda agregada foi de 7.8 mil milhões”, o que representa 0,04% dos PIB norte-americano, lê-se no estudo.

Donald Trump tem imposto medidas protecionistas para proteger a industria de transformação norte-americana. Em particular, o presidente norte-americano tem visado a China para reduzir a balança comercial que os EUA têm com a segunda maior economia do mundo.

Em 2018, Trump ameaçou aumentar as tarifas às importações de bens chineses de 10% para 25%. Desde a cimeira do G-20 na Argentina, no final de novembro, que os dois países têm estado em negociações com vista a um acordo comercial.

A data prevista para a conclusão das negociações era 1 de março. No entanto, Trump admitiu a extensão das negociações além daquela data.

https://jornaleconomico.sapo.pt/noticias/guerra-comercial-custou-78-mil-milhoes-de-dolares-a-economia-norte-americana-422834
7. Todos os animais são iguais mas alguns são mais iguais que os outros.