Archive for the ‘Plenitude: The Book’ Category
Friday, July 29th, 2011
Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released revised figures for the Gross Domestic Product going all the way back to 2007, and they aren’t pretty. The recovery is a failure; the economy is lousy; and the official discourse is in deep, deep denial.
First, the numbers. The last year of growth before the financial panic and subsequent economic collapse was 2007. Since then, the economy has actually shrunk. That’s right, real GDP was less at the end of last year than it was at its peak in 2007. We’re still digging out of the hole that Goldman Sachs and friends put us in.
Previous estimates were for a small level of annual increase (0.1%), but the revisions put the average yearly change between 2007 and 2010 at -0.3%. GDP fell in 2008 by 0.3%. It also fell in 2009, by a much larger 3.5%. And it has... (read more...)
Tags: austerity economics, GDP, GDP revisions, macro-economics, unemployment
Posted in Economics, Plenitude: The Book | 2 Comments »
Sunday, June 12th, 2011
The economic news of the last few weeks has not been encouraging. In Europe, the various national debt crises remain unresolved, with a continued monopoly of banker-friendly austerity programs, and their predictable consequences of rising unemployment and stagnation. Debtor countries are being forced into the same financial orthodoxies that prolonged the depression of the 1920s and 30s, so we shouldn’t be surprised at the failures they will bring. More recession may also be the future of the countries enforcing these once-discredited policies, as weak demand across the region represses consumer demand, investor confidence, and government spending. In the United States the details are different, but the main story is the same. The country is experiencing continuing mass unemployment (25 million Americans remain unemployed or underemployed), further collapse in the housing... (read more...)
Tags: shorter hours unemployment GHG emissions banker-driven austerity triple dividend
Posted in Economics, Plenitude: The Book | 19 Comments »
Friday, January 7th, 2011
The new year is a perfect time to resume my blog posts, which fell victim to a heavy schedule of speaking about Plenitude as well as two new courses at Boston College, where I teach full time. It’s a pleasure to be writing again, and to have the opportunity to send greetings for a good 2011. I hope you are healthy and thriving, despite the difficult political and economic circumstances in which the US and the world finds itself.
In the months since I’ve last written, I’ve become more convinced that the economic analysis in Plenitude was on-target. A major prediction, indeed premise of the book is that the labor market was unlikely to recover any time soon. This has now become the new conventional wisdom, in sharp contrast to the official story when the book was written, and for much of 2009 and even the first part of 2010. The punditry now reports that the unemployment rate is expected not to fall... (read more...)
Tags: 80% solution, four-day workweek, shorter hours, unemployment
Posted in Economics, Plenitude: The Book | 22 Comments »
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
A few days ago I gave a keynote address to the International Society for Ecological Economics which was held in Bremen, Germany. First time teleconferencing for a keynote, which was a nice, minimal carbon way to get the message out. Afterwards, people in the audience asked for some more detail on high-tech self-providing. Here’s my answer to them, which is also available online here.
I argued that to reduce ecological footprint and solve the unemployment crisis, hours of work should be reduced. This shares the available work and reduces pressure on eco-systems. The additional time off work available to households can then be deployed to what visionary philosopher Fritjhof Bergmann has called high-tech self-providing. That is, people make and do for themselves in areas such... (read more...)
Tags: creativity, DIY, fab labs, Frithjof Bergmann, High tech self-providing, new work, plenitude
Posted in Economics, Plenitude: The Book | 14 Comments »
Friday, August 13th, 2010
Despite the lack of policy progress on climate change and ecosystem degradation there is no shortage of solutions currently on offer. While the specifics may differ, those getting most attention share one characteristic—they focus on technological change. Whether it’s Pacala et al’s wedges, Jeffrey Sachs’ plan to reduce carbon emissions through plug in hybrids and carbon capture and storage, McKinsey’s cost abatement curve approach, or Jacobson and DeLucchi’s 100% renewables by 2030 plan, the emphasis is on technology. Most conspicuously lack a number of obvious changes that would reduce emissions and footprint. They barely address households’ lifestyles and “behavioral” changes (the first McKinsey report calls these too “difficult”), ignore changes in distribution of assets and structure of enterprises, and are light on the conditions of knowledge... (read more...)
Tags: hours of work, real climate economics, scale, sustainability, techno-fix, tripleE
Posted in Economics, Plenitude: The Book | 5 Comments »
Monday, August 9th, 2010
time for gardening
This post was originally published in Yes Magazine, August 9, 2010, at http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-work-sharing-boom-exit-ramp-to-a-new-economy
Twenty months into the United States’ worst recession since the 1930s, standard approaches for putting people back to work are proving increasingly inadequate. Corporate bailouts, tax cuts, government spending, and stimulative monetary policy have been the mainstays of the government’s response to the downturn. But unemployment has remained stubbornly high, and job creation has been far below what is needed to return the labor market to its pre-crash state.
There is one bright spot on the policy agenda: work sharing. Government policies that encourage... (read more...)
Tags: share work, shorter worktime policy, unemployment, Yes magazine
Posted in Economics, Plenitude: The Book, Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
Friday, July 9th, 2010
The economic news of the last week has been mostly bad. The predictions I included in Plenitude, which I wrote about a year ago, are unfortunately looking all too right. The first point is the view that we could expect unemployment to continue at high rates for quite some time. How long is that time? Now even mainstream pundits are saying years. There’s little dynamic from within the private sector to create the numbers of jobs that would be needed to reduce the pool of people looking for work. Just to keep up with population growth, the economy needs to add about 100,000 jobs a month. The private sector only created 83,000 in June, and state and local government lost 10,000. So not only are we not in an employment recovery, we’re not even running in place. Other signs of weakness in the economy included a reversal of the workweek (reducing), and wages in decline.... (read more...)
Tags: double-dib, income, plenitude, recession, unemployment
Posted in Economics, Plenitude: The Book | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
The events of the past few years—financial meltdown of 2008, the failed Copenhagen talks and increasing climate destabilization, the BP oil disaster, and the financial crises in the Eurozone—make it clear that the business-as-usual economy is both wreaking havoc on the planet and failing on its own terms. But so far, the conversation about how to transform this economic model has been stuck in neutral. Traveling around North America discussing my new book, Plenitude, I am increasingly convinced that a key obstacle to moving forward is a lack of confidence that there is another way. To gain that confidence, we need to articulate a model of how a sustainable economy could work.
The core insight of my model is the need to transform how people spend their time. Its first principle is to reverse the increased in time devoted to the market that has occurred... (read more...)
Tags: self-providing, share the work, shorter hours, unemployment
Posted in Economics, Plenitude: The Book | 23 Comments »
