Donald Trump is the President Mark IV (Read Mod Warning in OP)

rossie1977

All thanks to Reagan's and Bush Jr's tax cuts which syphoned all the wealth to the richest segment of us society. You think that chart is bad now, just wait a decade/15 years after Trump's tax cuts have fully taken hold.

Anyone arguing trickle down economics work is deluding themselves.

Wanderer78

rossie1977 wrote:

All thanks to Reagan's and Bush Jr's tax cuts which syphoned all the wealth to the richest segment of us society. You think that chart is bad now, just wait a decade/15 years after Trump's tax cuts have fully taken hold.

Don't forget about the Clinton administration to!

everlast75

Whilst Trump supporters can try and spin facts and figures on the economy,

I would love a Trump supporter to address

1) the tax fraud perpetrated by the Trump family, exposing the myth that all Trump got was a million (that in itself is an incredible starting point in life) from his Dad
2) the missing children
3) the fact that his supporters chant "lock her up", whether it be about Clinton or Feinstein, not found nor charged with any crime, and yet we have a number of Trump affiliates literally either plead guilty or found guilty of crimes and await sentences
4) the idea that Kavanaugh was "found" innocent when the truth is that the investigation was severely curtailed https://twitter.com/SenKamalaHarris/status/1050079986311421953

demfad

We know that the backers of Trump and Trump himself are vehement climate change deniers. The regime has installed climate deniers in all key environmental posts. Federal employees were encouraged to rat out climate 'believers' in the EPA during the transition. Trump pulled out of the Paris accord. Front and centre are individuals linked to well known funders of climate science denial, the Kochs, the Mercers, and the Heritage Foundation. The Mercers are Trump's main Backers and Steve Bannon is their man.

Let's look at Brexit: All operating out of the same London address 55 Tufton Street: Campaigns Vote Leave, Leave.EU AND Climate denial groups-- The Global Warming Policy Foundation, The Atlantic Bridge, Institute of Economic Affairs. 55 Tufton Street is Brexiteer central and is the climate denial centre of the UK.

The Heritage foundation is the main link cross Atlantic. After Liam Fox got appointed Minister for Trade within a week he met with 12 members of Heritage on Free Trade. His former Atlantic Bridge colleage (reason Fox was disgraced) Coffey is now with Heritage. Heritage organises 'Free Trade' seminars at the Conservative conference and all over the US.

Brexit UK ministers who deny/sceptical of climate change
Theresa May, Liam Fox, David Davis, Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom.
After a landmark ruling in The Netherlands Gove refuses to attend world conference for Environment ministers this week.

Believing in 'Free Trade' seems to be synonymous with denying climate change almost without exception.
The Bruges Group, The Legatum Institute, Economists for Free Trade, Institute for Economic Affairs, Cobden Centre ,Initiative for Free Trade
New Direction – The Foundation for European Reform, TaxPayers’ Alliance, Cambridge Analytica ,AggregateIQ ,Palantir
Breitbart, The Murdoch Empire , The Daily Mail, The Barclay Brothers
, BrexitCentral.

All involved in Brexit (and most with Trump) all sceptics or outright deniers.
Robert Mercer was paid almost half of Official Vote Leave monies, also paid be BeLeave (illegally), Veterans for Leave, and the DUP. He fully funds the climate denying 'scientist Arther Robinson in the US' and helps get his 'papers' published.

What is going on here? If we clear the mist from our eyes we can see.

This week a bombshell report was released on climate change stating that if the current trajectory continues in 12 years we will reach the threshold where the temperature will inevitably jump 5-6 degrees, the water levels rise by 60m with the breakdown of human civilisations and planet ecosystems as we know them. Worse than a global nuclear war probably. http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/

This was generally not front page news due mainly to the 100s of billions put into interference, disinformation and denial around climate change by the groups above. Again why? Why is it so important?

We should know by now what an green economic model to avert the coming catastrophe should look like but we generally dont, I can only generalise:

Fossil fuels must stay in the ground.
Global GDP must be reduced drastically. That means interest paying loans to support economies are out, economies can no longer grow by 2% or whetevr annually.
That's the end of the global Finance industry as we know it.
Global sharing of essential resources.
Meat and dairy removed from food chains.
Global coordination in this new world (Big Green EUs).

If the Overton window is an Overton football. It doesnt shift slightly left or right: It gets kicked onto a different pitch.
The billionaire fossil fuel guys, 'Free Trade' Capitalists, Global Finance billionaires, Money launderers, Businessmen criminals and criminal businessmen: they cannot follow us into this new world. Their world melts.
When the average joe and Jill Soap truly grasp global warming, when lazy journalists decide to truly take a position instead of half believing and doing nothing and when Governments act..then the world of these guys is gone. They melt much like the wicked witch of the West.

Unless they can capture democracy, grab the overton football and keep it. Make their billions while the future world burns. Peter Thiel himself said that Capitalism and democracy are no longer compatible. He believes this.

The truth is that the great existential struggle is between a climate change acceptance world and a climate change denial world. This is the war being waged. The realise and understand they are in this war, Bastards though they may be.

The goal is to keep us in the dark. They are in a race to capture our democracy, information, and societies so their world continues while the planet perishes as regards civilisations. And they have contingencies for this too.

Everyone feels helpless these days. How can we understand the world, why do I feel powerless.

You have the power. Take a position on climate change. Truly understand it. Teach your kids, colleagues. If we all become climate change aware and/or active. The bad stuff all goes away. It's not post-truth as these guys want us to believe.
We just need to look closer to find it.

RIGOLO

demfad wrote: »

We know that the backers of Trump and Trump himself are vehement climate change deniers. The regime has installed climate deniers in all key environmental posts. Federal employees were encouraged to rat out climate 'believers' in the EPA during the transition. Trump pulled out of the Paris accord. Front and centre are individuals linked to well known funders of climate science denial, the Kochs, the Mercers, and the Heritage Foundation. The Mercers are Trump's main Backers and Steve Bannon is their man.

Let's look at Brexit: All operating out of the same London address 55 Tufton Street: Campaigns Vote Leave, Leave.EU AND Climate denial groups-- The Global Warming Policy Foundation, The Atlantic Bridge, Institute of Economic Affairs. 55 Tufton Street is Brexiteer central and is the climate denial centre of the UK.

The Heritage foundation is the main link cross Atlantic. After Liam Fox got appointed Minister for Trade within a week he met with 12 members of Heritage on Free Trade. His former Atlantic Bridge colleage (reason Fox was disgraced) Coffey is now with Heritage. Heritage organises 'Free Trade' seminars at the Conservative conference and all over the US.

Brexit UK ministers who deny/sceptical of climate change
Theresa May, Liam Fox, David Davis, Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom.
After a landmark ruling in The Netherlands Gove refuses to attend world conference for Environment ministers this week.

Believing in 'Free Trade' seems to be synonymous with denying climate change almost without exception.
The Bruges Group, The Legatum Institute, Economists for Free Trade, Institute for Economic Affairs, Cobden Centre ,Initiative for Free Trade
New Direction – The Foundation for European Reform, TaxPayers’ Alliance, Cambridge Analytica ,AggregateIQ ,Palantir
Breitbart, The Murdoch Empire , The Daily Mail, The Barclay Brothers
, BrexitCentral.

All involved in Brexit (and most with Trump) all sceptics or outright deniers.
Robert Mercer was paid almost half of Official Vote Leave monies, also paid be BeLeave (illegally), Veterans for Leave, and the DUP. He fully funds the climate denying 'scientist Arther Robinson in the US' and helps get his 'papers' published.

What is going on here? If we clear the mist from our eyes we can see.

This week a bombshell report was released on climate change stating that if the current trajectory continues in 12 years we will reach the threshold where the temperature will inevitably jump 5-6 degrees, the water levels rise by 60m with the breakdown of human civilisations and planet ecosystems as we know them. Worse than a global nuclear war probably. http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/

This was generally not front page news due mainly to the 100s of billions put into interference, disinformation and denial around climate change by the groups above. Again why? Why is it so important?

We should know by now what an green economic model to avert the coming catastrophe should look like but we generally dont, I can only generalise:

Fossil fuels must stay in the ground.
Global GDP must be reduced drastically. That means interest paying loans to support economies are out, economies can no longer grow by 2% or whetevr annually.
That's the end of the global Finance industry as we know it.
Global sharing of essential resources.
Meat and dairy removed from food chains.
Global coordination in this new world (Big Green EUs).

If the Overton window is an Overton football. It doesnt shift slightly left or right: It gets kicked onto a different pitch.
The billionaire fossil fuel guys, 'Free Trade' Capitalists, Global Finance billionaires, Money launderers, Businessmen criminals and criminal businessmen: they cannot follow us into this new world. Their world melts.
When the average joe and Jill Soap truly grasp global warming, when lazy journalists decide to truly take a position instead of half believing and doing nothing and when Governments act..then the world of these guys is gone. They melt much like the wicked witch of the West.

Unless they can capture democracy, grab the overton football and keep it. Make their billions while the future world burns. Peter Thiel himself said that Capitalism and democracy are no longer compatible. He believes this.

The truth is that the great existential struggle is between a climate change acceptance world and a climate change denial world. This is the war being waged. The realise and understand they are in this war, Bastards though they may be.

The goal is to keep us in the dark. They are in a race to capture our democracy, information, and societies so their world continues while the planet perishes as regards civilisations. And they have contingencies for this too.

Everyone feels helpless these days. How can we understand the world, why do I feel powerless.

You have the power. Take a position on climate change. Truly understand it. Teach your kids, colleagues. If we all become climate change aware and/or active. The bad stuff all goes away. It's not post-truth as these guys want us to believe.
We just need to look closer to find it.

If your going to start teaching kids, you might want to start teaching them some facts , instead of the nonsense above.
And also not some anti-Trump anti-brexiteers guff.

All this nonsense about the Paris Climate Accord, I was in France when it was signed and most of the demonstrations were by environmental groups and enviromental activists AGAINST the Paris Accord about how crap and useless the agreement was.

Unfortunately those same groups are too scared now to say what they were saying in 2015 becasue it would align them with Trump Administration position whihc is exactly right on the accord , it was a beauracratic hodge podge of nonsense with no real effect on climate emissions and just dumped a load of costs on the US with no real effective implementation of targets for anyone else.

I take it you didnt read the international Energy Agency 2017 report.
https://www.iea.org/publications/fre...n/GECO2017.pdf

Carbon dioxide (CO2): Global energy-related CO2 emissions grew by 1.4% in 2017, reaching a historic high of 32.5 gigatonnes (Gt), a resumption of growth after three years of global emissions remaining flat.

The increase in CO2 emissions, however, was not universal.

While most major economies saw a rise, some others experienced declines, including the United States, United Kingdom, Mexico and Japan. The biggest decline drop came from the United States

The biggest decline came from the United States, where emissions dropped by 0.5%, or 25 Mt, to 4 810 Mt of CO2, marking the third consecutive year of decline.

So if your really worried about climate change and the Paris accord, why arent you upset at the EU and its member states where emmissions went UP, instead of focused on the USA where emissions went DOWN.
Although the UK was among the nations that declined.

According to the International Energy Emissions reports 99.99% of the nations who signed the Paris accord are increasing emissions whiles the one nation who opted out is actually decreasing them.

So wheres all the outrage at Irish Government and its lack of action on CO2 emissions, Ireland broke its binding targets and is increasing its CO2 emissions at a rate of knots.

You can read the Irish EPA emissions report .
https://www.epa.ie/pubs/reports/air/...ary_Report.pdf

Dont let reality get in the way of your anti-Trump Administration bias.

For a start you might want to start asking why Irish emissions are increasing at a rate of knots and are way off target.

demfad

RIGOLO wrote: »

If your going to start teaching kids, you might want to start teaching them some facts , instead of the nonsense above.
And also not some anti-Trump anti-brexiteers guff.

All this nonsense about the Paris Climate Accord, I was in France when it was signed and most of the demonstrations were by environmental groups and enviromental activists AGAINST the Paris Accord about how crap and useless the agreement was.

Unfortunately those same groups are too scared now to say what they were saying in 2015 becasue it would align them with Trump Administration position whihc is exactly right on the accord , it was a beauracratic hodge podge of nonsense with no real effect on climate emissions and just dumped a load of costs on the US with no real effective implementation of targets for anyone else.

I take it you didnt read the international Energy Agency 2017 report.
https://www.iea.org/publications/fre...n/GECO2017.pdf

Carbon dioxide (CO2): Global energy-related CO2 emissions grew by 1.4% in 2017, reaching a historic high of 32.5 gigatonnes (Gt), a resumption of growth after three years of global emissions remaining flat.

The increase in CO2 emissions, however, was not universal.

While most major economies saw a rise, some others experienced declines, including the United States, United Kingdom, Mexico and Japan. The biggest decline drop came from the United States

The biggest decline came from the United States, where emissions dropped by 0.5%, or 25 Mt, to 4 810 Mt of CO2, marking the third consecutive year of decline.

So if your really worried about climate change and the Paris accord, why arent you upset at the EU and its member states where emmissions went UP, instead of focused on the USA where emissions went DOWN.
Although the UK was among the nations that declined.

According to the International Energy Emissions reports 99.99% of the nations who signed the Paris accord are increasing emissions whiles the one nation who opted out is actually decreasing them.

So wheres all the outrage at Irish Government and its lack of action on CO2 emissions, Ireland broke its binding targets and is increasing its CO2 emissions at a rate of knots.

You can read the Irish EPA emissions report .
https://www.epa.ie/pubs/reports/air/...ary_Report.pdf

Dont let reality get in the way of your anti-Trump Administration bias.

For a start you might want to start asking why Irish emissions are increasing at a rate of knots and are way off target.

Just to repeat: Donald Trump, ALL his backers and ALL Brexit backers are climate change deniers. This is not a coincidence.
That is because the change to Global economics is such that it would leave Trump and his ilk left behind.

Obama did some work on adapting the US economy to being greener which Trump is gleefully undoing now.

Gbear

demfad wrote: »

We should know by now what an green economic model to avert the coming catastrophe should look like but we generally dont, I can only generalise:

Fossil fuels must stay in the ground.
Global GDP must be reduced drastically. That means interest paying loans to support economies are out, economies can no longer grow by 2% or whetevr annually.
That's the end of the global Finance industry as we know it.
Global sharing of essential resources.
Meat and dairy removed from food chains.
Global coordination in this new world (Big Green EUs).

I agree broadly with your post but I think you're muddying the waters a little bit with your list of requirements to fix this process.

Leaving the first one aside, because it's fairly obvious, the others point in a few different directions.

Global GDP must be reduced drastically. That means interest paying loans to support economies are out, economies can no longer grow by 2% or whetevr annually.
That's the end of the global Finance industry as we know it.
Global sharing of essential resources.
Meat and dairy removed from food chains.

What is the basis for this anti-capitalist list of requirements?

Why must GDP be reduced?

Imagine such a scenario.
It requires some magic but only to speed up implementation.
Imagine all transportation is electric, with sustainably produced components.
Imagine all power generation is low carbon (nuclear fission/fusion, renewable).
Imagine all construction is done with eco-concrete that absorbs CO2.
Imagine a cessation of deforestation and replanting in SE Asia and South America.
Imagine developments of synthetic meat, dairy.

That is enough to do what we need.

None of the above involves fundamental changes in the way we do business (depending on how fundamental you perceive oligarchal politics to be to our current system). It involves some quite bold legislation to curb particular industries, but not industry as a whole.
It would also require backing up climate accords with things like trade sanctions to ensure proper enforcement of environmental standards (hand in hand with financial aid to allow third world countries to skip or curtail their industrial eras and become environmentally stable more quickly than the Western world).

What's more, is that these industries require massive construction, development and skilled operation, giving massive scope to transition from existing industries.

If the entire chain of industries to construct a car, from the production of the factory that makes the steel, that builds the car, that is transported around the world, that gets to your house, is all powered by low or no-carbon energy, and the car runs on low carbon roads, through low carbon towns, while the driver is eating low carbon food, then there's no issue.

The notion that we need to drastically curtail population, when population growth rates have been dropping since the sixties and will all but level off at the current rate in twenty or thirty years, the idea that we need to dismantle capitalism, in favour of a socialist eco state, that we don't have the resources to go around, or the food, is all counter to the evidence, and only serves to play up to the conspiracy peddling by the far right.

We are, as a civilisation, because of the influences you outlined, doing very little to stop climate change, but it's not because it's all that complicated. Carbon dioxide isn't baked into our system of government, or industry. It happens to be a by-product of specific kinds of industry, that follow specific processes.

It's difficult, perhaps, because getting us going in one direction about almost anything is difficult, and the waters have been so muddied, and trust eroded to such a state that any action by government is seen as a power grab, and any action by an individual is derided as sanctimony, but the path to go from here to where we need to be, is a relatively straight line.

The problem isn't the notion of a free market, and that is made obvious by the fact that the forces at work are perpetually attacking the free market in any form that is recognised as a coherent system.

The EU is a massive free market system. Yes, there are regulations, but those are relatively minor in comparison to the trade and openness they facilitate. The notion that a free market is only free when you can mismanage gaslines so that they blow up in peoples garden, killing them, and you face no consequences, is completely incoherent and purely peddled by a cabal of self-serving kleptocrats, like the Koch brothers, who want to create not a Libertarian Utopia, as they claim, but rather a neo-feudalist system that is clearly stratified, with their cohorts and themselves unilaterally controlling society.

In some senses, Trump is counter to these guys. He's no less self-serving, but he doesn't actually have the foggiest about what is needed to advance the agenda. He's an agent of chaos, that has exposed the true believers who really want to destroy democracy. He doesn't want an ethnostate as an intellectual exercise. He's just a sort of racist oul' fella you'd see down the pub. He doesn't have a coherent plan to destroy democracy, he just wants things done his way right now and has no understanding or interest in due process. He isn't trying to give the rich a priveliged place that places them above democracy, he's just doing everything in his power to push his own narrow interests.

Bannon, Koch and these guys seem to believe some variation of that kind of guff and they can use Trump, but they're not the same.

The only chink of light, is that a true believer would be getting all these Republican platform policies through, but doing it in a way that doesn't bring attention to themselves, through foreign policy maintains the US hegemony, and roping other countries into this more strongly, rather than pushing them away, there would be more competent people in charge of more areas of government actively sabotaging it, instead of the sort of careless disrepair it has found itself in, and it wouldn't be wasting its time on embarrassing scandals, nor polarising the floating vote through transparent corruption and brown-nosing tinpot dictators.

RIGOLO

demfad wrote: »

Just to repeat: Donald Trump, ALL his backers and ALL Brexit backers are climate change deniers. This is not a coincidence.
That is because the change to Global economics is such that it would leave Trump and his ilk left behind.

Obama did some work on adapting the US economy to being greener which Trump is gleefully undoing now.

Great take that down the Dail and ask why your elected officials arent reducing their carbon emissions, before you knock another nations policies.

The totalitarian left liberals bias has led them to prefer to increase emissions and endorse their politicians as long as they sign the Paris accord, rather than endorse a nation that didnt sign the accord and is reducing emissions because the Trump Administration is in the WH.

And before you go searching for some stick to beat the Trump Administration on , you might want to take a look at the steps the Australian Government is taking or NOT taking to reduce their emissions.

The totalitarian liberal left are reduced to a one trick pony at this stage, everythign is ALL the TRump Amdinistrations fault . Rather than some self-reflection , they play the same old broken record, they tag everything on the Trump administration.
At this stage theyd be better to sort out their own hypocrisy and ineptitude and get their own house in order .

everlast75

RIGOLO wrote: »

Great take that down the Dail and ask why your elected officials arent reducing their carbon emissions, before you knock another nations policies.

The totalitarian left liberals bias has led them to prefer to increase emissions and endorse their politicians as long as they sign the Paris accord, rather than endorse a nation that didnt sign the accord and is reducing emissions because the Trump Administration is in the WH.

And before you go searching for some stick to beat the Trump Administration on , you might want to take a look at the steps the Australian Government is taking or NOT taking to reduce their emissions.

The totalitarian liberal left are reduced to a one trick pony at this stage, everythign is ALL the TRump Amdinistrations fault . Rather than some self-reflection , they play the same old broken record, they tag everything on the Trump administration.
At this stage theyd be better to sort out their own hypocrisy and ineptitude and get their own house in order .

If you want people to read your posts, I would respectfully suggest you drop the labelling..

Any chance you could reply to my questions regarding the Tax Fraud, missing kids, or hamstringing FBI investigations into Kavanaugh, or the chants of lock her up in the face of Trump's goons imprisoned or soon to be?

RIGOLO

rossie1977 wrote: »

All thanks to Reagan's and Bush Jr's tax cuts which syphoned all the wealth to the richest segment of us society. You think that chart is bad now, just wait a decade/15 years after Trump's tax cuts have fully taken hold.

Anyone arguing trickle down economics work is deluding themselves.

You might want to study some economic history past and present before you make partisan anti-Trump bias economic comments.

Obama gave one of the LARGEST Tax CUTS in American history of over 800 billion in 2010 by extending those tax cuts.

And TAX Revenue is actually UP in the US for FY2018, at 3,34 Trillion, which is a record TAX REVENUE, with projections for TAX REVENUE in FY2019 to be even better at 3.4 Trillion.

Dont let facts like RECORD TAX REVENUE and Obamas MASSIVE TAX CUT, get in the way of making a partisan snipe at the Trump Administration.

demfad

RIGOLO wrote: »

Great take that down the Dail and ask why your elected officials arent reducing their carbon emissions, before you knock another nations policies.

The totalitarian left liberals bias has led them to prefer to increase emissions and endorse their politicians as long as they sign the Paris accord, rather than endorse a nation that didnt sign the accord and is reducing emissions because the Trump Administration is in the WH.

And before you go searching for some stick to beat the Trump Administration on , you might want to take a look at the steps the Australian Government is taking or NOT taking to reduce their emissions.

The totalitarian liberal left are reduced to a one trick pony at this stage, everythign is ALL the TRump Amdinistrations fault . Rather than some self-reflection , they play the same old broken record, they tag everything on the Trump administration.
At this stage theyd be better to sort out their own hypocrisy and ineptitude and get their own house in order .

(Do you believe in climate change may I ask?)

No offfense. But this is bull**** that Trump wouldn't even contemplate.

Trump put a climate denier in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency.
He purged the Agency of those that had gone to Climate change meetings or believed in human related climate change. He is closing nature reserves for oil drilling and fracking.


Trump pretends he doesn't believe in climate change. He said it was a Chinese hoax I believe.

But you are stating the Doh-magogue's policies are actually to reduce carbon emissions?

Chips Lovell

Mod Note

Hi folks,
The charter states:

This forum is for discussion and debate and we will not tolerate soapboxing. If you are here to "shout everyone down" with your opinions, we will see you as a negative contributor to the forum and will take appropriate action. High standards of debate and quality posts / threads are required.

Repeatedly calling anyone who doesn't agree with you things like the "totalitarian liberal left" is (aside from making no sense whatsoever) soap boxing.

I'd encourage everyone to be respectful and engage with other contributors rather than hurling insults.

TomOnBoard

Trump's tax cuts were almost entirely oriented to Corporates and to the 5% of individual tax-payers who have taxable income of more than $200k p.a., with particular reference to benefitting the 'super-rich'. Such tax cuts will benefit the wealthy much more than poorer taxpayers. In fact that 5% received more than 75% of the 1.1 trillion in individual tax cuts.

Absent significant additional economic growth, these tax cuts for the wealthy will add to an already scary deficit, a principle that the GOP used to abhor.

By contrast, Obama's extension of Bush era tax cuts were much more relevant to poorer people as they were part of a suite of measures required to create job and other economic stimuli immediately after the economic meltdown at the end of the Bush administration.

everlast75

This is quite the extraordinary and scary story!

https://twitter.com/AmichaiStein1/status/1050003263666475014

Nothing much from the WH on it - perhaps its because Mr. Kushner is bosom buddies with the Crown Prince

What also doesn't help is DJT calling the Press "the enemy of the people"

Penn

TomOnBoard wrote: »

By contrast, Obama's extension of Bush era tax cuts were much more relevant to poorer people as they were part of a suite of measures required to create job and other economic stimuli immediately after the economic meltdown at the end of the Bush administration.

Which is exactly what you're supposed to do in a recession. You raise taxes and lower spending to create a financial surplus during an economic boom, so when a recession happens (which it inevitably will), you then have a surplus to allow you to lower taxes and increase spending where needed to stimulate financial growth to bring you out of the recession.

Trump cutting taxes when the country is not in recession is against standard fiscal policy practices. It is not comparable to Obama's tax cuts.

demfad

Gbear wrote: »

I agree broadly with your post but I think you're muddying the waters a little bit with your list of requirements to fix this process.

Leaving the first one aside, because it's fairly obvious, the others point in a few different directions.

What is the basis for this anti-capitalist list of requirements?

Why must GDP be reduced?

GDP must be reduced because because money is lent tp States at approx 2% per annum. Thus an economy needs to grow 2% a year to balance the books. To grow it has to produce more 'stuff' year on year which unavoidably contributes to global warming. It means an end to consumerism. We should produce largely what we modestly need.

Imagine such a scenario.
It requires some magic but only to speed up implementation.
Imagine all transportation is electric, with sustainably produced components.
Imagine all power generation is low carbon (nuclear fission/fusion, renewable).
Imagine all construction is done with eco-concrete that absorbs CO2.
Imagine a cessation of deforestation and replanting in SE Asia and South America.
Imagine developments of synthetic meat, dairy.

You have 12 years. You will need magic.
Electricity needs power stations. Nuclear power stations take decades to build and are not zero carbon. Remember any net increase in carbon emissions brings us to the threashold. This is not going away. Power sources need to be 100% renewable.

It would also require backing up climate accords with things like trade sanctions to ensure proper enforcement of environmental standards (hand in hand with financial aid to allow third world countries to skip or curtail their industrial eras and become environmentally stable more quickly than the Western world).

If the oligarchs control the US, UK, Russia, China, Brazil etc. there is not much you can do. Perhaps people at least understand the move by the Trump regime re. Paris accord now?

The notion that we need to drastically curtail population, when population growth rates have been dropping since the sixties and will all but level off at the current rate in twenty or thirty years, the idea that we need to dismantle capitalism, in favour of a socialist eco state, that we don't have the resources to go around, or the food, is all counter to the evidence, and only serves to play up to the conspiracy peddling by the far right.

The world population is 7.4 million now and will be 11.2 million by 2100 at current rates.
This is not about left and right. It is about what policies are needed to ensure human life on this planet can continue. All conspiracy peddling by the far-right melts when people understand this truth. There may still be a right and left on the overton window still but sustainability of human existance will be the universal limiter. These must be global so global rules are inevitable.



EDIT:: Just saw this about probable Brazilian president:

He also said he would withdraw Brazil from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, arguing that global warming is nothing more than "greenhouse fables."

http://uk.businessinsider.com/wsj-endorses-jair-bolsonaro-far-right-2018-10

TomOnBoard

everlast75 wrote: »

This is quite the extraordinary and scary story!

https://twitter.com/AmichaiStein1/status/1050003263666475014

Nothing much from the WH on it - perhaps its because Mr. Kushner is bosom buddies with the Crown Prince

What also doesn't help is DJT calling the Press "the enemy of the people"

A Senator Chris Murphy on Morning Joe alleges that Jared Kushner has been sharing US intelligence on Saudi dissidents (which he learned confidentially) with MBS and the Saudi Government. This is potential dynamite, and will need to be bottomed out. If true, and it needs to be clarified quickly, it leads to a conclusion that a part of the White House may have been (perhaps unintentionally) complicit in the murder and dismemberment of a US resident and member of the Press by a foreign power.

B0jangles

TomOnBoard wrote: »

A Senator Chris Murphy on Morning Joe alleges that Jared Kushner has been sharing US intelligence on Saudi dissidents (which he learned confidentially) with MBS and the Saudi Government. This is potential dynamite, and will need to be bottomed out. If true, and it needs to be clarified quickly, it leads to a conclusion that a part of the White House may have been (perhaps unintentionally) complicit in the murder and dismemberment of a US resident and member of the Press by a foreign power.

Wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear that Kushner got bamboozled by the Saudis into revealing top secret information - the man is a perfect example of what happens when a person believes inheriting wealth somehow proves that they are blessed with a superior intellect.

Billy Mays

B0jangles wrote: »

Wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear that Kushner got bamboozled by the Saudis into revealing top secret information - the man is a perfect example of what happens when a person believes inheriting wealth somehow proves that they are blessed with a superior intellect.

Yeah but he's gonna bring peace between Israel and Palestine

carrigan

Specifically on the Fed, the Fed have been creating boom and bust cycles since their formation in 1913, far beyond normal business cycles. Low interest rates in the 1920s drove the mania that ended in 1929 and resulted in the great depression.

Dropping interest rates to 1% after the tech crash in 2000 was the primary driver of the housing boom as loans were so affordable, and rapidly raising them from 1% to over 5% by 2006 caused the housing crash as most people who borrowed at 1 (or zero) % could not afford to repay their mortgage.

The Feds history is drastically lowering interest rates to try and stimulate the economy during a recession, which has the impact of goosing asset prices, and then crashing the economy by raising interest rates as the business cycle is about to end.

History is about to repeat, we are due a recession and when it hits many corporations and governments will struggle to meet their debt obligations, especially at higher interest rates.

Wanderer78

carrigan wrote:

Dropping interest rates to 1% after the tech crash in 2000 was the primary driver of the housing boom as loans were so affordable, and rapidly raising them from 1% to over 5% by 2006 caused the housing crash as most people who borrowed at 1 (or zero) % could not afford to repay their mortgage.

I wonder what part the deregulation of the financial sector had on all of this, effectively handing the monetary system over to banks, allowing them to print as much money as they wanted in the form of credit?

B0jangles

Billy Mays wrote: »

Yeah but he's gonna bring peace between Israel and Palestine

Nowhere's as peaceful as a graveyard, so this is probably fairly accurate.

BabyCheeses

RIGOLO wrote: »

You might want to study some economic history past and present before you make partisan anti-Trump bias economic comments.

Obama gave one of the LARGEST Tax CUTS in American history of over 800 billion in 2010 by extending those tax cuts.

And TAX Revenue is actually UP in the US for FY2018, at 3,34 Trillion, which is a record TAX REVENUE, with projections for TAX REVENUE in FY2019 to be even better at 3.4 Trillion.

Dont let facts like RECORD TAX REVENUE and Obamas MASSIVE TAX CUT, get in the way of making a partisan snipe at the Trump Administration.

Obama put more money in people's pockets? For the past 2 years Ive been hearing how great tax cuts were.

everlast75

https://twitter.com/EamonJavers/status/1050402125182894083





Jesus H Christ.

If Kanye is going be the UN Ambassador, is Kid Rock going to be new AG?

Gbear

demfad wrote: »

You have 12 years. You will need magic.

Any timeframe of 12 years to accomplish the kind of comprehensive "fix" you're talking about would require magic.

You're not going to build 100m windmills, solar plants covering an area the size of Nigeria and the massive storage or transmission infrastructure to make a purely renewable system viable in 30 years, never mind 12.
We're also not going to revert to pre-industrial levels of civilisation.
It's not going to happen. We have to stick with what is possible.

demfad wrote: »

Electricity needs power stations. Nuclear power stations take decades to build and are not zero carbon. Remember any net increase in carbon emissions brings us to the threashold. This is not going away. Power sources need to be 100% renewable.

Nothing is zero carbon. Steel, aluminium, plastics, concrete and all the electronics that go into renewables aren't free of CO2. Per GWh nuclear is of the same order of magnitude of CO2 production as renewables, and given that it's that or brownouts, it's the most practical solution we have.

CO2 isn't magic or poison. We just need to reduce it. We need no new technology and not even that much political will to make it so that by 2040 we have completely electric transportation and a nuclear/renewable power infrastructure, and doing so would probably reduce CO2 from power generation and transportation by 90+%, and acheive more than half of the difference in our annual CO2 budget on its own, with further savings in the knock-on reductions in fossil fuel industry as a whole - mining, processing and so on.

demfad wrote: »

If the oligarchs control the US, UK, Russia, China, Brazil etc. there is not much you can do. Perhaps people at least understand the move by the Trump regime re. Paris accord now?

True, however I think these governments are operating on a high level of entropy - one that Trump has only increased.

Obviously we need that house of cards to tumble sooner rather than later.

demfad wrote: »

The world population is 7.4 million now and will be 11.2 million by 2100 at current rates.
This is not about left and right. It is about what policies are needed to ensure human life on this planet can continue. All conspiracy peddling by the far-right melts when people understand this truth. There may still be a right and left on the overton window still but sustainability of human existance will be the universal limiter. These must be global so global rules are inevitable.

There will be no revolution. If things are to collapse, it will be after we have already failed to address climate change and the world is racked with war, famine, uncontrolled refugee crises and worsening weather phenomenon.
Perhaps we will eventually be able to wrestle control back of the climate.

If we're to "fix" the problem, it will be through the current framework of our society, politicians making bold, but ultimately obvious decisions about emissions, and taking a certain degree of change on the chin at the expense of our living standards, and probably at the cost of quite a few lives in the most impoverished regions in the world.

demfad wrote: »

EDIT:: Just saw this about probable Brazilian president:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/wsj-endorses-jair-bolsonaro-far-right-2018-10

The question with him will probably be how long it takes for the Brazilian people to assassinate him if he becomes leader (if they don't succeed before the election). Strong men seldom come to a good end. How long it takes will be key to restablishing Brazil's fragile democracy after he dismantles it, and preventing it descending into a worse state.

rossie1977

RIGOLO wrote: »

Great take that down the Dail and ask why your elected officials arent reducing their carbon emissions, before you knock another nations policies.

Ireland could do alot better. The fact we are miles behind the Nordic countries is is depressing given we are surrounded by water and the wind never seems to stop.

However our emissions per capita ie 12.8 million tonnes are quite a bit less than the US at 16.2 million tonnes.

RIGOLO wrote: »

You might want to study some economic history past and present before you make partisan anti-Trump bias economic comments.

Obama gave one of the LARGEST Tax CUTS in American history of over 800 billion in 2010 by extending those tax cuts.

And TAX Revenue is actually UP in the US for FY2018, at 3,34 Trillion, which is a record TAX REVENUE, with projections for TAX REVENUE in FY2019 to be even better at 3.4 Trillion.

Dont let facts like RECORD TAX REVENUE and Obamas MASSIVE TAX CUT, get in the way of making a partisan snipe at the Trump Administration.

It was the biggest economic crisis since the 30s with 800,000 losing their jobs every month. Had he raised taxes then he likely would have tanked economy completely.

You failed to mention that for the first 11 months of fiscal year revenue from individual and payroll taxes was up 4% or $105 billion while corporate tax fell 30% or $71 billion. So again the ordinary Americans are paying for the redistribution of wealth to the top.

Itssoeasy

I'm getting notifications that Kanye West apparently went off on a rant in the Oval Office. I mean why not I suppose.

Igotadose

Itssoeasy wrote: »

I'm getting notifications that Kanye West apparently went off on a rant in the Oval Office. I mean why not I suppose.

Mutual admiration society in effect. Also, there was a Kid Rock sighting at the WH too.

Just the Thursday episode of Apprentice: WH edition.


https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/410989-trump-meets-kanye-at-surreal-oval-office-meeting
Some gems from Kanye:

"What I need 'Saturday Night Live' to improve on and what I need liberals to improve on: If he don't look good, we don't look good," the "Famous" rapper said of Trump. "This is our president. He has to be the freshest, the flyest."

"If he don't look good, we don't look good. This is our president," West says of President Trump pic.twitter.com/VoXNy5f6rp

---
And, showing what's important in America today, here's this about the coverage:

"
It created an awkward split-screen effect on cable news, as networks broke away from coverage of Hurricane Michael, which has killed two people and caused widespread property damage in the most powerful storm to hit the Florida Panhandle in recorded history. "

Pelvis

TomOnBoard wrote: »

A Senator Chris Murphy on Morning Joe alleges that Jared Kushner has been sharing US intelligence on Saudi dissidents (which he learned confidentially) with MBS and the Saudi Government. This is potential dynamite, and will need to be bottomed out. If true, and it needs to be clarified quickly, it leads to a conclusion that a part of the White House may have been (perhaps unintentionally) complicit in the murder and dismemberment of a US resident and member of the Press by a foreign power.

That's a fairly gigantic leap tbh.

What could Kushner share that the Saudis couldn't know themselves? The guy wrote for the Washington Post, he wasn't exactly in hiding. He was in the embassy on the Friday and was asked to return on the Tuesday, at which point he goes missing. If they wanted him dead they certainly didn't need any help.

mcmoustache

Igotadose wrote: »

Mutual admiration society in effect. Also, there was a Kid Rock sighting at the WH too.

Just the Thursday episode of Apprentice: WH edition.


https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/410989-trump-meets-kanye-at-surreal-oval-office-meeting
Some gems from Kanye:

"What I need 'Saturday Night Live' to improve on and what I need liberals to improve on: If he don't look good, we don't look good," the "Famous" rapper said of Trump. "This is our president. He has to be the freshest, the flyest."

"If he don't look good, we don't look good. This is our president," West says of President Trump pic.twitter.com/VoXNy5f6rp

---
And, showing what's important in America today, here's this about the coverage:

"
It created an awkward split-screen effect on cable news, as networks broke away from coverage of Hurricane Michael, which has killed two people and caused widespread property damage in the most powerful storm to hit the Florida Panhandle in recorded history. "

I thought this was funny (I also thought that the oval office was meant to be secure but things are apparently different now):


https://twitter.com/SteveKopack/status/1050437012917014530