Climate change

Lessons From the British Election

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment
55ddfb60723389.5a56f216db0a1

“Boris” by Raymond Wang is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

There is no way to avoid talking about the horrors of the British election.  With the confirmation of Brexit and the triumph of Boris Johnson, we have all stood witness to the disgraceful demise of a nation now left only with dreams of past glory.

For us though the important question is about what it means for our own election.  On that point the discussion has been generally limited to one question:  Does it say we should worry about the Democrats going too far to the left?  That one is hard to decide, since Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn was so unpopular for his own sake. 

However, that being said, there is still much to discuss.   We propose three points:

  1. Catastrophes not only can happen, but will happen if we don’t watch out for them.

The Democratic debates thus far have played out largely as conflict between the center and left wings of the party.  That means essentially all of it has been fought in the never-never land of post-Trump.  That’s not the same as working on viable strategies to win.

This will be a very tough election, fighting the Fox News, the Electoral College, incredible amounts of Republican money, and all the (legal and illegal) powers of incumbency.  Most candidates have done a reasonable job in providing position papers for what they stand for.  They need to tell us how they’re going to win.

  1. We need to recognize that the electorate isn’t convinced of the urgency of change.

In Britain, Corbyn’s big socialist revival was not so much wrong as a non sequitur.  What actually was all this trying to solve?  Why was it an argument for change?  It was ultimately a declaration of irrelevance.

We have a similar problem.  The very first question of the very first debate has never been adequately answered.  Elizabeth Warren was asked (more or less): “Why are you proposing all these changes when—by all polls—the vast majority of Americans think the economy is doing fine?”  That’s a question for all Democrats—what is it that’s so bad that we need change?

Warren’s answer—about radical inequality—was nowhere near strong enough.  It essentially said that all those people who answered the polls were just wrong.  But no one else has done better.  Healthcare was a great issue for the midterms—that’s something broken that we’re going to fix.  But it’s not enough to unseat Trump.  Impeachment doesn’t touch peoples’ lives directly—it’s about an abstraction called democracy.  Even climate change comes across as an abstraction, although it’s part of what’s needed.  Democrats need a short, clear reason why people need to worry that there is something that needs fixing.

That’s a bar to be passed before we can begin to get traction with specific plans for change.  Until then, like it or not, “fundamental structural change” will be a negative.

  1. We have to keep this a referendum on Trump.

Corbyn pretended Brexit wasn’t the main issue and went off with his own program.  The public was unwilling to follow.

Regardless of how broadly we see the issues, this election is about where Trump is taking the country.

We need a well-defined Trump story to challenge Republican claims of a great rebirth of the American economy.  Even on trade they’ll do what worked for George Bush on Iraq—we’ve been through all the pain, don’t miss out on the rewards!

That means we need to show what four more years of Trump will actually mean.  And how to meet the real challenges for our future.  It seems helpful to think in terms of personal and national issues for the voters:

Personal well-being

Healthcare (complete failure of vision)

Decline in good jobs (manufacturing, good jobs in general)

Education (no initiatives, no funding)

Income inequality (all growth for the rich)

Guns (unsafe to be in school!)

Climate change (what world for our children?)

Women’s rights trampled (bodies owned by the government)

⇒ Worse life for everyone but the protected few

National well-being

Eroding technology dominance (science marginalized)

New businesses sacrificed to old (Net Neutrality)

Losing out with climate change denial (ceded primary position to China)

Weakness with China and North Korea (situation is worse than ever before)

Nuclear proliferation (a danger in all directions)

Racism and divisiveness undermine our strengths (just what Putin ordered)

Demise of democracy (our major source of prosperity and power)

=>  Welcome to the Chinese century

 

That’s where we’re going.  For our own dreams of past glory.

American Fascism in the World

/ ontheoutside / 3 Comments
43065391090_8a20d937be_b

“President Trump, MAGA rally, Wilkes-Barre, Penn – 1” by The Epoch Times is licensed under CC BY 2.0

As a country we normally don’t care much about foreign affairs.  We’ve had five Democratic debates with almost no questions about it.  International issues always come out low on the lists of what people care about.

However, the time has come to care.  It’s nothing new to identify the rise of fascism in this country as a problem.  But for some of the worst consequences you need to look outside the borders.

Fascism is many things but it is above all a world view.  The mother country is God-certified superior, under assault, and fully-equipped to teach everyone else a lesson.  That feels great; life is good when you’re on top of the world, and you don’t have to care.  But it is by definition blinding in its assessment of reality.

Our current foreign policy is predicated on the idea that we’re running things and can dictate to the rest of the world.   We don’t need allies or international institutions, because we can simply tell everyone else what to do.  Allies are people you shake down because they need you, and adversaries are just waiting to get defeated by irresistible national power.

That world view might have had some reality at the end of World War II (when we were sensible enough not to pursue it), but it has little to do with reality today.  The longer we resist reality, the worse for us.

First of all our military power is strictly bounded.  Nuclear weapons are such that for now no major power can be defeated.  We can’t even do anything about North Korea.  So we shouldn’t believe that counting bombs says anything meaningful.

Our economic power is also limited.  Our declared economic war on China has thus far been anything but “easy”.  There is no sign that China is ready to capitulate, and their resulting push for national self-sufficiency has many negatives for us—in particular reduced access to the markets we think we’re opening.  That’s in addition to an overall slow-down of international growth and much of the recent intellectual property theft.  The blindness of the belief in our power is such that we systematically ignore consequences.  It is truly dangerous to believe—as a principle—that we don’t have to care.

Why do we have allies?  If you believe what’s coming out of Washington, the answer is that we have allies because, out of the goodness of our hearts, we choose to defend our friends.  Since this is pure beneficence, they had better pay up and to hell with them if they don’t.

In fact (of course) we have allies to increase our strength.  NATO came into existence, so that a next world war with Russia would be fought in Europe and not here. That role may have diminished, but it’s not gone, and Europe allies are also assets in dealing with middle-eastern terrorism and with the economic strength of China.  South Korea and Japan are similarly counterweights to the rising power of China.   Again, they are the ones on the front lines.  Shaking them down increases China’s dominance in the East.

Why do we have international institutions?  Those were created by the US as a means of increasing stability (to the benefit of our economy) and of exercising power.  The UN is imperfect institution, but its role as an international forum is essential.  The WTO is the best means that exists to push for labor and environmental standards in international trade.  Make no mistake that world trade has been good for the US economy.  If it hasn’t done as much for the population as a whole, that’s because—as in many other areas—rich donors have controlled our own objectives.  That’s our problem to fix.  International institutions are the way we, together with our allies, can exert decisive power without conflict.

Fascism is a major impediment to the exercise of US power.  Relations with China are a case in point.   Nothing says this is easy, but we certainly should be playing with a full deck.  As it is, we’ve already strengthened the hands of hard-liners, and it will be work to walk that back.  That’s still worth the effort, because conflict is a good option only in fascist fantasy.  A defined “victory” is highly unlikely, and at the very least we’re talking about:  a new cold war, lower economic growth, no access to the Chinese market, an uncontrolled and expensive arms race, no leverage on Chinese behavior, a real chance of war.  Rational national interest says forget the fascist dreams, strengthen our hand, and work on a real future.

There are other aspects to this as well.  Fascism has many other destructive tendencies, we’re promoting them worldwide, and they come back to bite us.  Racial intolerance is built-in to the world view.  We’re excusing it domestically and normalizing it elsewhere.  Modi’s anti-Muslim policies would probably have happened anyway, but our influence has damped down international outrage.  Similarly we may decry China’s treatment of Uighurs, but the impact of our outrage is weakened by our own actions.

Even more important, our fascist disdain for international cooperation has seriously hobbled the worldwide effort to combat climate change.  The US-led unanimity of the Paris Agreement was the basis for the world to make progress.  Once we broke that and encouraged others to follow, it has been more than difficult to assemble the global good-will necessary to make progress.

After World War II it was easy to believe fascism was something special with roots in German or Italian culture.  We now know better.  It is a tendency than needs to be fought everywhere.  It is a mindset that takes over from rationality and hurts most severely those who fall prey to the disease.

We’ve had more than enough of it already.  For our own sake we’d better learn to fight back.

On Climate—We Have to Beat Trump or Nothing Else Matters

/ ontheoutside / 3 Comments

Our piece on Inslee’s climate proposals included a video clip from MIT professor Henry Jacoby on the international side of climate change.  That clip deserves more than a passing reference, because its implications go far.  In its own way this is truth-telling for a story that has been largely ignored

 

Just to repeat the obvious, there is only one atmosphere.  All the carbon dioxide from everyone gets mixed up.  Since we represent about 15% of the world CO2 production, we only control 15% of what happens to us.  We can feel good or bad about how well we’re doing with our 15%, but the other 85% comes from everyone else.

For that other 85% it should be emphasized that there is no world government to deal with it.  The only way to make progress is for all of the world’s nations to unite on a process that makes sense, on a national basis, for each country involved.  That was the achievement of the Paris Agreement—there is no other mechanism for going forward.  (We’ve talked elsewhere about justice and economic impact.)  US withdrawal means we will be stuck with consequences of that other 85%, regardless of what we as individuals or cities or states can do.  Let’s see what that means.

US involvement created the Paris Agreement after decades of international squabbling.  Obama’s active intervention also raised Chinese consciousness to stop their rapid increase in CO2 production—as seen in the following chart:

s11_2018_Projections

The Paris Agreement is not a single step, but a process.  The path to success involves regular revisions of national targets according to a succession of 5-yearly updates.  The next such update is in 2020.

Progress won’t happen by itself.  It only works if everyone keeps on-track—and US withdrawal undermines it all.   Now that we’re out, the Germans and the Japanese are replacing nuclear plants with coal, and the Chinese (while retreating from fossil fuels in their own country) are pushing coal and oil elsewhere with their Belt and Road initiative.  With the US committed to (and encouraging) cheating, the 2020 updates are in jeopardy, and there is a real question if the poor countries of the world will be in any position to deal with the 75% of CO2 emissions reductions that Professor Jacoby notes must come from the developing world.  Rich countries like us are only going escape the consequences of climate change if they can get back in the game to make progress with poorer ones.

As long as Trump is the US President, we are giving up on what happens with most of the sources of the CO2 in our atmosphere.  That means, regardless of what we do for ourselves, we are committed to a national disaster.

So it’s important to keep things in perspective.  It’s good for the US to commit the effort necessary to meet our climate objectives.   But we should not delude ourselves about what controls our destiny.  The highest priority for climate action is to defeat Trump.  Between now and the election there is no other climate priority that comes close.

Warren’s Medical Plan Competes with Climate Action

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment
Nursing Stock Images NIH

“Patient Talking With Doctor” by NIHClinicalCenter is licensed under CC BY 2.0

There is nothing complicated about this conclusion, but we ought to be clear about it.

Warren got herself boxed-in on medical care.  She repeatedly said she wouldn’t raise medical “costs” for the middle class, but other candidates and the press accused her of using “costs” as a smokescreen to hide taxes.  That forced her hand—to defend herself she had to make medical care free, a position quite different from where she started.  The middle class would pay neither premiums nor taxes.

That meant coming up with an awful lot of money.  The Warren proposal is a highly optimistic exercise in finding taxes and cost-savings to make it fly.  As opposed to all the other proposals—which involve some form of participant contribution—this one takes all the participant payments from general tax funds.  And it needs so much money you have to say that the well is now largely dry.

That has consequences for everything else.  For climate this is particularly sensitive, because there is every reason to believe that current cost estimates are decidedly on the low side.  What’s more, the costs included in the Inslee climate plan (which Warren now supports in principle) come to $9T over ten years, whereas the taxes from Warren’s own climate plan only cover $3T.   The rest is yet to be done.

Healthcare is too expensive to expect it just to fit it in.  It’s fantasy to believe it doesn’t matter.

 

Inslee’s Plan in the Green New Deal

/ ontheoutside / 4 Comments

3843553872_0ecd7289ac_z

Inslee’s 200-page climate plan is the most detailed document any candidate has put together to address climate change.  Elizabeth Warren has said she will adopt it as is.  Many people would like to view it as a first fleshing out of the Green New Deal.

As such, it is important to recognize what the Inslee document does and doesn’t do.  Here are a few points.  (For context, this note builds upon our other recent points on climate change.)

  1. Inslee’s document is very good at documenting areas of government action necessary to address climate change.

– Undoing Trump’s many areas of damage within the executive—environmental planning and regulations of all kinds

– Reestablishing links to international organizations—the Paris Agreement and many others

– Identifying topics to be included in a plan—electric grid, carbon pricing, protecting affected workers

  1. However that is different from a plan of action.  Two issues:

– There isn’t yet a concrete plan for the core electric grid and power sources

This is completely controllable and in the critical path for everything else.

It is a strategic necessity—our generation’s interstate highway system.

It has to be planned nationally, with roles determined for renewable sources.

It will push the envelope on technology.  The Chinese are already deploying the highest capacity links ever.  Management and control software may be our strength.

– Inslee covers many topics, but doesn’t systematically prioritize sectors or work.  The following chart is key:

consumption-by-source-and-sector

                Where is lowest-hanging fruit both initially and as we go?

               What are technological and other barriers to success?

               What sequences of steps will be necessary?

               How does carbon pricing fit in?  What do we do about carbon capture?

  1. Transition costs are greatly underestimated.

– Inslee talks about protecting unionized coal and oil workers from loss of income.

– Far more affected people will be outside that core:  automobile mechanics, manufacturing value chains, service stations, etc.

– Most American car manufacturers risk being left behind—today’s cheap electric cars use South Korean technology.

– We will also—for the same reasons—need to protect workers losing jobs from other technology changes, such as AI.

  1. International aid requirements are also greatly underestimated.  This chart shows the problem:

s11_2018_Projections

– Many “All others” countries will be unable to do it alone—we will have to contribute.  That’s not just for them; it’s our atmosphere too!

– Inslee focuses on investment, but we will also need to provide financial aid and active assistance.

– MIT Professor Henry Jacoby gives a broader summary of this little-discussed truth:

 

 

  1. Inslee doesn’t cover everything in the Green New Deal.

– No claim to provide jobs for everyone (mostly high-skill jobs)

– Many claims but little detail about aid to “front-line communities”

– Minimizes management challenges of a huge undertaking—e.g. preventing corruption

  1. The technology picture is fanciful.

– We do need to develop new technologies or be left behind

– We’re not going to be world-dominant in everything—we’re not the only ones trying.

– We’re also not going to bring back the good old days of manufacturing—not any more than we did with iPhones.   Most climate jobs will be in deploying technology.

– Market opportunities are enormous, and we can expect success in our areas of strength.   But employment and equality of opportunity are part of a bigger story.  Fighting climate change by itself won’t bring nirvana.

  1. Inslee’s tariff and sector protection story is exactly what we’re forbidding the Chinese to do.

– When we need worldwide cooperation, the last things we need are trade wars and tariffs!

– Rules for fair trade have got to worked out in the WTO as part of the Paris Agreement process

– We have to accept the reality of fair competition—whether we’ve paid for the research or not.  That’s a necessity for climate and ultimately beneficial economically.

  1. Inslee’s document—like Green New Deal itself—declares an unnecessary culture war.

– We’re deploying new energy sources to replace fossil fuels.

– For the most part, we’re changing how things work, not what they do.

– The transition will involve everyone, but it’s not a culture or lifestyle question.  People will continue to drive (electric) Chevy Suburbans.

  1. We still need a program of initial major steps.  This should include items such as:

– Blue ribbon team on electric grid and power sources with dated deliverables

– Specifics on carbon pricing (why not just take CCL?—it’s progressive)

– Commit to supporting all people hurt by technology transition (& try to scope it)

– Spend real money on test systems to productize carbon capture

– Get serious about what will be needed (by year) to completely change transportation.

– Business roundtable to address application needs

– Back to a leadership role in moving forward on Paris Agreement commitments.

– Fix WTO rules to be consistent with Paris objectives.

– Better understand what will be needed from us (and others) for third-world countries do their part.

– Organize to make the most of climate jobs for the whole population.

Reasons For Pragmatism

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment
44590252562_fa8baf6626_b

“COD Volunteers Give Back to the Community During COD Cares: Roll Up Your Sleeves Service Day 103” by COD Newsroom is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Ideology can be inspiring, but it’s never the same as a plan to get a job done.  For now it’s getting in the way on many issues.  Here are a few examples:

  • Healthcare

ACA is an imperfect compromise with known issues—in part because it was a non-final version enacted in the wake of Scott Brown’s Koch-funded victory for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.  All attempts since then to improve ACA have been blocked by anti-healthcare Republicans.

That being said ACA has enabled tens of millions of people to be covered for the first time, and it is supported by a non-regressive tax—the ACA surcharge.  It also attempts to get around some of the worst problems private insurance by covering pre-existing conditions and regulating how much of premiums must be paid out in benefits.  In fact insurance profit margins in healthcare are well-below margins in every other insurance category.

The most critical issues today are to improve coverage, pricing, and the range of offerings for ACA plans.  Some of this is just a matter of rolling back Trump efforts to destroy ACA.  The rest is more complicated, but nonetheless well-studied.  This needs to happen independent of long-term plans.

“Medicare of All” is an ideological choice—to get healthcare away from the insurance companies.  It’s a good slogan but something of a misnomer, because the changes from Medicare are decidedly non-trivial.  The Sanders bill optimistically assumes all private insurance will be gone in four years, but without a real plan to make it happen.  While virtually all developed countries have some form of universal healthcare, the systems are dramatically different from country to country, and many keep some form of private insurance.  Even current Medicare has many roles for private insurance.

Focusing on Medicare for All does nothing for current problems, and puts us in an ideological battle for the future.  As Krugman recently pointed out “Not many people love their insurance companies, but that doesn’t mean that they’re eager to trade the coverage they know for a new system they don’t.”  Additionally—for current Medicare recipients—Medicare for All is easily posed as a threat to Medicare itself.  That worked (using ACA) in the Scott Brown election and could well work again.

The long-term objective is affordable, universal coverage.  And the first steps start now.

  • Climate Change

If anything should ever be non-ideological it’s climate change.  Facts are facts, and the solutions are primarily matters for science and engineering.  The main political issues are how much money to spend and who is going to pay for it.

Both sides, however, have turned this into a culture war.  That the Kochs have dishonestly challenged the basic science is by now almost beside the point.  “Bad science” is just an epithet thrown out in the culture war.

We need to stop the culture war and make sure we take care of the people who will be hurt as the economy goes off fossil fuels.  Green New Deal makes some things better and some things worse.  There’s so much political deal-making thrown into it, that it can’t possibly be viewed as anything other than a left-wing grab bag.  Maybe that helps in defeating Trump—which is of course necessary for any progress—but there are too many distractions from the climate change goal.

We need to make sure that everyone realizes that the new post-climate-change world is a good world for all—even people who want to drive AV’s and Chevy Suburbans.  And we need to commit to protect everyone—coal miners, car mechanics, people hit by carbon pricing—who might otherwise be hurt in the process.  That’s the objective.  We can refuse to play the Koch’s culture war game.

We have to get away from the notion that we need to create a kind of “socialist new man” of conservation.  We’re not repealing the industrial revolution.  We just changing the technological underpinning of how things work.  That’s not to say there aren’t other environmental issues, but they’re not the same.  We shouldn’t expect fixing climate change will put the EPA out of business.

  • Jobs

This whole area is filled with so many wrong and misleading ideologies that we can start with a catalog of wrong ideas.

Manufacturing is the basis of economic strength.

The Chinese have gutted manufacturing in the US.

Balance of payments is a good measure of economic strength.

A strong private sector will provide everything necessary for economic success.

Tariffs protect and strengthen the domestic economy.

Low business tax rates build national competitiveness.

Taxing businesses hurts everyone.

Strong unions and strong anti-trust enforcement will preserve the middle class.

Public sector jobs aren’t real jobs, they just pull money out of the private sector.

In the future there just won’t be jobs for everyone.

From the list it’s clear this isn’t a matter of left versus right (even if you discount the lunatic fringe running things today).  The world is moving into new territory (more and more companies with 0 cost of production, tighter and more automated international links).  So the challenge is to see things as they actually are.

Ideologies can get in the way of understanding.  No candidates seem willing to talk about the transition from a manufacturing to a service economy.  Unions and antitrust enforcement are still good ideas, but they buy less than they used to.   As the last of the points indicates, futurists tend to provide more ideology than reality, so nothing beats experience and pragmatism.

For ourselves we see government challenges as:

Supporting education and research to keep ahead of technology change.

Managing the continuing transition from a manufacturing to a service economy.

Taxing and regulating dynamic international corporations with monopoly power.

Building and maintaining a bigger public sector to provide necessary services the private sector won’t.

Maintaining quality of life for all who live here.

Consciously working at creating and managing the international institutions that make the world work.  We used to recognize this responsibility (and avenue to exercise power), and no one else is stepping into the gap.

Overall we need to recognize the problems we do have—not the ones of the 1930’s—and look what will actually be effective to fix them.

There are many other areas where the same kind of story plays out—where an ideological war masks a more tractable, practical problem.  I’d even put immigration in that category.

It’s hard, given the daily atrocities of the Trump era, to focus on anything less than epic changes.  But if we’re going to put the pieces back together afterwards, it’s pragmatism that will get the job done.

Some Points on Climate

/ ontheoutside / 1 Comment

This touches a number of recent climate issues—some new, some familiar.

Background

  1. The primary issue for climate change is alternative energy sources.

We’re not repealing the industrial revolution.

This shouldn’t be a partisan or a lifestyle issue

We need good science and the will to fight entrenched special interests

  1. Conservation is important for now but not the main focus

Alternative energy will do the job if we do ours.

Chevy Suburbans are not the issue—we just need to power them differently

 “Respect for nature” by primitive peoples is irrelevant (but coming from all directions!)

  1. This is a fundamentally international problem where what we do for the rest of the world is as important as what we do domestically.  We will need to spend money on parts of the world who can’t.

s11_2018_Projections

  1. The fossil fuel companies have an evil influence on progress, but outrage at what they knew 50 years ago is a distraction.

Oil isn’t unclean—we just went too far with it.

The Carter era thought the world was running out of oil in less than 50 years

               The key issue is influence of fossil fuel companies now.

  1. Conversions of coal power plants to gas are still important—they buy time

We’re up against a carbon budget limit—any saving buys time

Progress is still rapid for alternative energy technologies—even electric cars aren’t ready for everyone yet.

Coal plants, especially new ones, continue to be a problem.

  1. We should stop calling a carbon pricing a tax.

We need to stop the huge fossil fuel subsidy—$1 T per year in the US—that comes from using the atmosphere as a free carbon dump.

We need a plan to make the population whole—and earn the trust we will do it

History and politics

  1. Obama actually did quite a lot for climate

International unanimity (after many years of failure)

A process to do more in the future

Turning China around (look at China’s line on the emissions chart above)

               Seed funding for Tesla and subsidies for electric cars

Note—the US was the primary beneficiary of the Paris Agreement.  We’re not being told to stop emitting at twice the rate of anyone else!

s12_Top_FF_Emitters_percapita

  1. Trump’s effect on progress is far worse than acknowledged

Reversed progress on all environmental issues in the US

Broke international unanimity—okay for everyone including China, Japan, and Germany to backslide with coal power plants

Legitimized attacks on climate action everywhere (Australia)

Continues to block any international cooperation on any issue

Going forward

  1. The single most important action is to defeat Trump

He is a roadblock to progress by anyone’s definition.

Any of the Democratic candidates would be good—no one has a real plan yet anyway

  1. The Green New Deal delivers a necessary coalition for progress

Makes clear that the new world is a good place to be.

Unites all constituencies

Must eventually add carbon pricing.

Not yet a plan

  1. The youth climate movement is helpful but a little worrisome

Non-partisanship makes it easy to co-opt—speakers at rallies dismiss all establishment parties.

               Trump was (in part) elected by young people who thought voting didn’t matter.

  1. If we can get past Trump, then we all need to get serious about a real plan

consumption-by-source-and-sector

Needs to address our current usage

Make sure it happens–what to fix when and by whom

               Minimize the hurt (particularly for the disadvantaged)

Recognize full international responsibilities

Don’t expect climate efforts to fix everything.  Broader issues include:

Easing workforce disruptions from technology, globalization, etc. (not just from climate)

Education

Infrastructure (much more than climate)

Jobs and wages (unions, minimum wage, role of the public sector)

Racism and sexism (need rules for everywhere)

Inequality overall (need a tax plan)

Other environmental issues will still be there to be solved

The Nightmare World of Our Making

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment
42946816534_576ebd3fe4_b

“presidential Twitter” by osipovva is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The first Democratic debate began with a question to Warren about the economy: “Since most Americans think the economy is doing fine, why do you need all those plans for change?”  She responded by pointing out that the “great” economy was primarily benefiting only a lucky few.

Even that, however, understates the issue.  It’s not just that unemployment rates don’t tell the whole story about what it means to be working for a living.  It’s that there is so much run amok with the direction of the country that the unemployment rate doesn’t begin to stand-in for the strength of the economy or the well-being of the country overall.

For that we need to pull together many strands and formulate a picture what it would mean to have four more years of Trump—the kind of world we are making.  This note attempts to make a start.  We can be explicit about many things.  Our path of decline was clear from early on, but now we have more specifics.  We should leave no doubt about the risks we run.

In doing this, one goal is to avoid what I felt was a problem with the Clinton campaign.  Trump kept talking about change, but we didn’t get across the danger in those changes: what they would mean for ordinary daily life, for the environment, for the courts, for democracy in America.  Who’s to say if that would have made a difference, but many people were certainly surprised by what they got.  If nothing else, it would have called out the risk of non-voting.

What follows is an outline with a few supporting points and references.  As noted this is a start.

More unprecedented floods, hurricanes, temperatures, etc.

By leaving the Paris agreement we broke the international unanimity that was the best chance for progress.

               Each lost year is time we won’t get back

Disdain for science and technology in government

Non-support of research and education

Ignoring climate change technologies

Choosing big, established companies over innovators (Net Neutrality)

Xenophobia and racism encourage entrepreneurs to go elsewhere

=> Lower standard of living

=> Real threat to our military security

  • Nuclear proliferation and risk of nuclear terrorism

Encouraging nuclear proliferation by statements and actions (N. Korea vs Iran)

More players means more chance of theft or sale

Belligerence normalizes nuclear weapons

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist sees highest risk of catastrophe ever

  • Back to the 19th century on woman’s rights

Roes vs Wade hangs by the thread of Roberts’ desire for Court legitimacy.

One more Supreme Court vacancy, and we all live in Alabama.

  • Erosion of opportunities for middle class life

Education—weakening of public education and more generations in debt

Attacks on unions

Healthcare at issue—ACA hobbled with no other proposal in view

Continued declines in good jobs for people without degrees

No recognition of the problems created by technology change

Cutting the safety net—If you don’t succeed you’re a loser

Conflicts stoked between races, ethnic groups, cultures

No interest in racial justice—to the detriment of all

Cruel and intentionally divisive Immigration policy

Major hit to both security and prosperity

Trade wars instead of alliances and international norms

New arms race already announced

Policy rooted in weakness—from fighting on all fronts

Conflict as the first choice— “Trade wars are easy.”

Other wars too?

  • Weakened environmental and other standards

Air and water

Workplace safety

Food safety

  • Bubble economy based on debt

Good times prolonged by deficit-funded stimulus

Proven recipe for cycles of boom and bust (back to the 19th century here too)

No Republican history of help during downturns

  • Undermining of democracy in the US

Increasing government by fiat (“executive order”)

Restriction of voting rights

Politicization of the Justice Department

=> Democracy is not a luxury—it made us what we are.