Let's talk about lab grown chicken....

Sustainable Development for Inner Cities and the Developing World

This summer, I am taking a graduate class in Sustainable Development at the University of Maryland. We read Glynn Cochrane's book, Festival Elephants and the Myth of Global Poverty. It gave a good insight on how broken the current system is - and why most development money is wasted on spending for economists and grant writers and NGOs, not the poor. If such schemes were tried domestically, the operators would be arrested for fraud.

This is not to say that we should not do development. Indeed, we must - especially as climate change displaces hundreds of millions of people on the rim of the Indian Ocean. The method I am advocating can also be done here. Those who follow my Center for Fiscal Equity site or our submissions to Ways and Means and Finance will find them familiar.

If we want real development, we need to build more apartment houses with classrooms and clinics on-site. There are ways to do passive air conditioning that are ancient involving the creation of air currents. We can recycle water. We can do energy from solar panels and wind. We can install dehumidifiers to make the tropics habitable. We can do hydroponics and greenhouses (and grow worms to turn black water waste to soil).

How do we build such things? The newest development in housing - which can be done in Africa, Indonesia or Philadelphia - is stackable prefabricated tiny homes. These can be built in country or imported. 

Unless we pay people to get educated, they will have opportunity costs that get in the way. This is true in South and Central America, Mexico, the US inner city, the Reservation, Africa, South Asia, Ukraine, Syria and anywhere that housing and education are subpar.

Where do we find the people (who would staff these apartment/schools). Train teachers, maintenance and nurse practitioners and have them pay back the education through paid service (pay them to go to school too). This can happen in the US or any other developing nation - and yes, given how empty it is and its inequality - the United States is a developing nation. 

For some jobs, like fixing dehumidifiers, an expert trains an apprentice while working, then the apprentice works as a journeyman then becomes a master to train new apprentices (and going from complex to complex).

How do we pay for this? We can both redirect aid from the World Bank/IMF/USAID/NGO complex - as well as from TANF and SNAP and pay people to get remedial education (including ESL) and pay the rent from these stipends. For the long term, we propose that in both the United States and the developing world, funds for education, family support (a child tax credit) and healthcare be raised using a subtraction value added tax. 

Any operation with employees would pay this tax, although for some employers, such as development projects above, the tax would be akin to a negative income tax. For this reason, in the developing world, this tax should actually raise money from all other employers, governmental and international governments and agencies. A local value added tax would also be levied - but with no tax exemption for government or development agency employees. For more information on these taxes, see the Center for Fiscal Equity web page backgrounder on Consumption Taxes.

One final thing, and this also goes for road building and water development, give GRANTS, not LOANS. Forgive the outstanding loans and turn any related bonds into US and other donor country debt - to be paid back by increases in progressive income taxes. In the US, EPA gives grants for water projects and the Army Corps of Engineers does not require repayment to build dams. Why is this not standard all over the world? We can do one of two things - make states take out federal loans for such facilities or quit giving loans to the developing world.

The Golden Rule works in development too. Indeed, it is the only way not to turn poor nations in Africa and Asia into Chinese client states.

A Future Beyond Capitalism? Socialism Explained. See my comments on ESOPs

The business cycle (and overproduction) is a myth. The problem is the tax cut cycle. When taxes are cut on capital gains and executive compensation, money is moved from consumption to speculation (which is savings, not investment in plant and equipment), leading to the creation of junk assets (such as mortgage backed securities and an overfunded oil futures market). When these financial products are sold to households and investment funds, they are revealed to be garbage (for example, single family rentals that are not well maintained or overpriced housing in the homebuyers market) and that is what crashes the economy. 

Also, when taxes are cut, increased debt is required (which again, provides leverage for creative investment products) to keep the economy afloat. When taxes are increased, speculation decreases and people like Greenspan calls a balanced budget dangerous to capitalism. It is, but capitalism is investment, NOT THE FREE MARKET.

The reason wages have not gone up are two-fold. One, the minimum wage does not go up with inflation. Two,  prices chase the median dollar, not the median household. The median dollar is at the 90th percentile. The reason for the spread, however, is bad math. Seriously. We give wages in the public and private sector on an equal percentage basis (high executive salaries come from speculation - because they are paid with capital gains or borrow against their shares - and borrowing is not income). If wages were increased on an equal dollar per hour basis, inequality would go away in a generation.

Taxes on incomes reward the rich for failure in their investments (capital loss), which offsets their salaries. If we had a nice value added tax on goods and services and another on assets,, it does not matter how they got their money, When they buy either stuff or stock, it would be taxed. No dodges. Also, if high incomes from salaries and dividends faced a residual graduated income tax - with no deductions for anything, then the combination of consumption VAT, asset VAT, a net business receipts tax to distribute social benefits with pay, rather than by government and that residual income tax would end high salaries (because the combination of taxes would result in marginal rates in the 80s) and, most importantly, cuts in worker salaries to get more profit.

The irony of Fox News and Trump's opposition to socialism is that it had less to do with opposing equality and more to do with nuclear weapons. On Ukraine (not just the current war, but the first invasion and the sanctions from it), Trump was bought off by Putin - the guy from the KGB with the nuclear weapons - so Trump and certain Republicans in media and Congress who oppose aid to Ukraine are essentially backing Moscow. The irony is thick.

Again, the free market is not capitalism. Capitalism is the unfree market for wages (monopsony) and products (monopoly) where the capitalists pocket the economic rent. In a real free market, there would be no rent. The current use of stock options, grants and capital gains/dividend favored rates as executive compensation gives the CEO class all of the profits from wage theft and unfree consumer prices. Investors, especially institutional investors, only get a "normal profit." Normal profit is a decent dividend based on what the market for savings and dividends provides. Anything over that goes to the executives. Adequate taxes (as above) end the incentive to steal.

Because reactionaries always split workers by race, gender, immigrant status and sexuality, working class traditionalists vote one way and workers vote the other. Not a new thing, but it is why socialism is so hard to vote in. Pretty much impossible - especially because socialists always favor the hated minorities. Therefore, the path is employee ownership. to goose employee ownership, replace capital gains and inheritances taxes with the asset value tax at a high enough rate so that heirs and trust funds want a tax break. That tax break would be to expand the capital gains exemption for sales to an ESOP or COOP to sellers of public shares. Also, mark asset VAT to market at IPO, option exercise and the first sale after inheritance, gift or donation. If heirs (farmers, small businesses or shareholders) keep the operation going, no tax. When they bail out of these businesses - they pay on full value, not appreciation. Except if they sell to that ESOP or COOP.

The other challenge is to make ESOPs democratic, rather than capitalist lite. The answer to doing so is to give them better toys - such as housing and consumer finance from within and cooperative purchasing of housing and food - or housing with the ability to grow food, also clothing, education, healthcare and whatever the employee-owners wish to buy cooperatively. In other words, have workers control the means of consumption.

How to get this to happen. Make all asset capital gains taxable at one rate - including short term gains, through the use of asset VAT. Repeal death tax as above with zero rating for ESOP sales. No capital gains tax either - asset VAT would do that. Convert the deduction for sales taxes paid to a credit - essentially turning business taxes to a VAT. This is a tax cut and a way to end income taxes for most households - although the child tax credit would be distributed by employers as a deduction from their net business receipts taxes. State NBRT would also have deductions for education, from ESL to Community College/first two years of 4 year college and tech school, at the school of one's choice - including Catholic School.  Also health insurance. While there would be NBRT surtaxes for higher salary and dividend payouts, the recipients would not have to pay - just the employer. The credits would end small business, because big companies would get a tax break for rehiring such workers as staff rather than contractors. 

The GOP will not resist such tax reforms. Cut taxes - get communism.

From Lab to Table: I Tasted the World’s First Cultivated Meat!

At least a little bone and fat need to be grown to mix hamburger. Also, DARK MEAT chicken and turkey - duck is all dark meat. It just tastes better and does not dry out.

The important thing is to miniaturize and automate for a home and space flight version - use NASA money to develop it. In space, there may be sheep, but no cows. Maybe goats too - for the milk and cheese.

There should also be a version that can be done by cooperatives - including ESOPS - that have company stores that sell to employee-owners. Let these owners produce under license. There will be plenty of commercial business to go around.

Breakthrough Solar Panel Makes Hydrogen At Home!

Put the high pressure hydrolyzer in a car with electricity coming from an overhead line, embedded in a roof deck that powers the car while "in network" The network also provides central computer control. The hydrogen is used when outside of the network - which would exist in urban, and possibly suburban or exurban, areas as well as on interstate and major highways. It would also be fed from home electric (solar, wind, central power, whatever). This means getting rid of carbon in non-urban areas (like most of Iowa). Roof decks would have solar and grass and streams (to maximize solar), just because we can - or they can simply be grass covered. 

Home electricity and internet would also come through roof deck system (or walls of roadway). On daily commute, car would stay in system in urban areas and drive you to transit and drive itself home - to return to pick you up from transit later. Nuclear power (made from recycled waste) would mostly power the system.

Basic Human Need? Or Investment Asset? Housing Affordability in the US i...

The ultimate form of smart growth urbanism is employee-owned companies which also provide housing and transportation, as well finance and consumer products - either including food or through employees working a shorter workday while growing their own food in ways developed for space missions (lab grown meat (blood, fat and bone), recycled water, aquaculture, chicken coops, lambs and hydroponic and green house veggies and potatoes. If you work, in the early part of your career, you get an apartment and a meal plan. Later, you can get a home if you want to grow your own food (and kids).

Mass ownership of rental property should be illegal: a rant.

This system was about to crash and started to do so until the pandemic bailout, where Pelosi and Mnuchin (a huge private equity slumlord) kept people in homes, while the Fed stabilized the bonds.

Eventually, supply and demand will kill AirBNB that cannot adapt. The question is whether we can force bailouts to include sales to tenants at the bottom-basement prices.

The ultimate answer is employee-owned firms that also provide apartments to younger workers (and student interns - summer associates even) and will finance homes for worker-owners later in their careers. If you own the company store and bank, it's not usury. Homes, transit and workplaces would be better designed (smart growth models) in walkable communities.

The key is to have such systems ready when, not if, the current system crashes for the last time.

The Big Economic Problem of Shrinking Cities | Economics Explained

Shrinking cities need to "de-annex" and give unsustainable pieces at boundaries to counties or organize them as their own municipal areas. 

Tax support needs to change at the same time. Split property tax into land and buildings with buildings going to city for services and land going to state to extract location value. 

Education and social welfare should be funded with employer paid subtraction value added tax.

Limit income tax to top 20% of income. Brackets set to 80th percentile to 96th, 96th to 99th, 99th to 99.9th and top 0.1%. 3% for each bracket.

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