We need to transition to an economy that produces and consumes less

As the economy shows some signs of recovery, the divide between the haves and the have-nots remains a problem.

The stock market is back to record highs (not adjusted for inflation, but the Wall Street types like to ignore such things and focus on their Dow Jones type metrics, it's a psych thing), housing is up, Corporations are in great shape (propped up by foreign profits), but the unemployment numbers are barely budging.  Poverty numbers are in shameful territory, the net worth of the middle class has dropped and stayed low, and the social safety net is at risk.

So, what is the real problem, and how do we address it?  Well, I believe that the issue is that we are in a confluence of historic changes in world population and technological advancement.  The technology has improved to make manufacturing more efficient and productive, and thus requires fewer workers to make more products. This means that even if manufacturing makes a major return to the U.S., fewer workers will be needed here at home to produce those products.

Meanwhile, the explosive growth of humanity over the last few decades has put a huge burden on the planet's resources that technology is expected to relieve.  I believe that that is a false hope.  The size of the problem is just too huge.  Humanity needs to transition to a paradigm of lower consumption in order to try to maintain the health of the environment.

The problem then, is that even if we reduce consumption and thus save the planet, we are likewise reducing demand for products putting even more people out of work.

Economists get a lot of press (or whatever the digital equivalent term is) analyzing the economy and prognosticating the best ways to grow the economy and get people back to work.  But, if we succeeded in the ways that the economists would like, we trash the planet.

This is why I believe that we need to transition to an economy that produces and consumes less, shares the bounties of technology more, decreases the disparities of income and wealth, and favors lower procreation rates to save our planet. 

Believe in democracy. Do the right thing for the common good.

If people did the right thing, we wouldn't need regulations to compel them to do so. 

I am not claiming that all regulations compel the right thing.  There are too many powerful lobbies influencing regulators to make that claim.  But, if you believe in democracy, and are smart enough not to throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water, regulations generally reflect the collective will of the people.  Or, at least the indirect will of the people through those we elect to represent us.

Many laws and regulations have near universal support.  When considering "regulation", there often is a split between those in favor and those against.  This is ridiculous.  The lack of specificity in the argument polarizes the camps into this for and against situation.  Any discussion of regulation, without specifying a particular regulation or group of regulations, is a shallow mockery of intelligent discourse.  To be against "regulation" as a generic term, means to be against civil democracy.

In my experience, I have found that people are more interested in themselves, their families, and their own personal community of friends that share their lifestyle, than in the collective common good.  Doing the "right thing" for them means to do that which positively effects them or their circle, as defined above, as opposed to that which positively effects the common good.  There are many examples of this.

One example is taxes.  The conservative republican and libertarian stance on taxes is that they are against them.  What an easy argument to win.  If people act as I suggest, they will agree that taxes are bad and will be against them, regardless of the positive effects that paying their share has on the common good.  As with regulation, to be generically against "taxes" means to be against civil democracy.  One must be specific in one's arguments.  This is the origin of the disconnect between the desire to cut taxes and the lack of ability to find programs to cut from the budget.  People like the government programs that are funded by taxes.  But they still like the anti-tax stance because they see their own money, their own self interest, being taken to pay for them.

People need to do the right thing for the common good.  Sure, there are varying opinions as to what is in the best interest of the common good.  But, if everyone was trying for the common good there would be less division than if everyone was looking out for their own good and that of their own personal circle.  Compromise would be easier to achieve.  Agreement would be more common.  The common good would be more served.

Believe in democracy. Do the right thing for the common good.

Don't waste the energy that I am trying to save

One of many frustrations that environmentalists endure is that of seeing so much energy wasted in our society while we are making conscious efforts to save it.

While it is a bit of a non sequitur to tie the electricity I manage to save by making active energy use choices to the waste of energy by any one particular user, it is annoying at best to make those choices and to see a case of unnecessary energy use and to know that it is wasting more energy than I am saving.

I heard that the new Memorial Bridge being built in Portsmouth New Hampshire and Maine will be illuminated by LED lights as kind of a show piece, a local focal point.  Probably something that will show up in tourist brochures.  The announcement spoke of energy efficient LEDs.  Now anyone who has followed my blog knows that I am a promoter of LED lights.  But, I promote LEDs as a replacement for other less efficient bulbs, NOT as excuses to light the world unnecessarily.

I found this article with photos on the subject:

http://portsmouth-nh.patch.com/articles/psnh-donates-40k-to-memorial-bridge-lighting-project

I hope that they use LED street lights, if they feel the need (I do not share the opinion that the bridge needs lights at all) to illuminate the road surface, but to put decorative lights on the bridge and to use the excuse that the lights are energy efficient masks the reality that energy is being wasted.  I am sure that the lighting of this bridge will not be "dark sky compliant" which is another reason to oppose such lighting of the bridge.

I remember reading an article somewhere that spoke of the moral hazard of energy efficiency technology.  It spoke of the risk that the low relative cost of energy efficient technologies would lead to wasteful use of those technologies.  Sadly I see this as an example of that process.

So whether it is lighting a bridge unneccesarily, or any other wasteful use of energy, please, don't waste the energy that I am trying to save.

A bit of dis-assembly facilitates recycling

Our humidifier "died" a few days ago.  We rarely use it.  Our home humidity generally remains at a decent level even in the winter (for one example why see: Hang your clothes to dry them, even indoors).  But recently the dry air won the battle, so I went out to the barn and got out our old humidifier.  After running it for a few days, I was awakened by our smoke detector which had detected an electrical short caused by a leak.  The bottom of the reservoir where the element comes through had corroded beyond being able to seal properly.  This was a non-repairable situation, so the humidifier was "dead".

This caused me to embark on my usual dis-assembly process of dead appliances.  All it took was a Phillips head screwdriver and a few minutes to separate plastics, metal, and electronics.  I was quite pleased as I took it apart to find the plastics recycling code markings on all of the large plastic parts, which made recycling even easier.

Recycling is very important for our planet.  Some things are easier to recycle than others.  When things are beyond repair, their serviceable life expended, it is time for disposal.  Many things can be recycled with a small effort.  Whereas this humidifier would not be recyclable whole, its parts were easily recyclable with a small bit of effort.

Having dis-assembled a number of things for disposal, I have found that many times there are even parts that can be saved for reuse.  Screws, bolts, springs, o-rings, and other parts can be put in stock for when they are needed in the future.

We really need to transition to the philosophy of the "cradle to cradle" manufacturing and recycling of products promoted by McDonough and Braungart in Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.  While we wait for industry to get fully on board with that necessary advancement, one of the ways you can help to reduce waste and recycle items you are discarding, is to spend a few minutes dis-assembling and separating the parts for proper recycling. You will feel good about your efforts and the planet will thank you.

Heat tape and other cold weather band-aids

It's winter here in the northern hemisphere.  Climate change and global weirding has had our weather fluctuating between bitter cold and unseasonably warm.  During the really cold spells, energy consumption spikes as homes and businesses find their furnaces, boilers, and heaters running longer and more often in order to maintain comfortable living temperatures.  That is completely understandable.  While it is best to keep temperatures a bit low, and to add a clothing layer, realistically we all need to heat our homes.

What I would like to address is heat tape and other methods of preventing freezing.  In most cases, creating heat to prevent freezing with these products merely masks a problem that needs to be solved, and is not itself the solution.  The energy that is wasted is substantial and the solution is to correct the problem as opposed to reacting to it by using a product that constantly consumes energy.

Heat tape is used to prevent pipes from freezing, keeping ice from expanding and rupturing the pipe causing a damaging leak.  What is really needed is to correct the problem which puts the pipe in danger of freezing.  Proper location and insulation of water pipes and the walls they run through, should eliminate the need to use heat tape.  Most people do not use heat tape, so those that do should consider what they can do to fix their potential freezing situation.  There is obviously something wrong, but heat tape is not the answer.

Another use of a heat tape product is in order to prevent ice dams on the eaves of a roof.  These heat tapes zig-zag along the edge of the roof constantly heating the area in hopes of melting any snow and ice that may accumulate there causing ice dams.  Ice dams can be damaging and dangerous, but proper roof construction and insulation can eliminate the need for this wasteful energy waste.

As if heat tape wasn't bad enough, there is worse out there.  While radiant heat is fine indoors, there is an entire industry creating products to melt snow from on sidewalks and even driveways.  Pipes cast in to the concrete circulate heated water through the concrete heating it so snow and ice cannot accumulate.  This takes huge amounts of energy.  A shovel and perhaps an occasional bit of sand was adequate for centuries, there is no need for such a wasteful product.

So, please consider wasteful energy uses that relate to cold, snow, and ice.  There are alternatives and the planet needs us to use them.

I don't like freebies

I don't like freebies. Most people love freebies. Something for nothing can be nearly irresistible. One thinks, “I may need something like this, so why not take it.” Well, for one reason, because you don't need it now, and by accepting it you validate the practice of giving our wasteful freebies.

Companies use freebies to promote themselves and their products. It is understandable that they want to promote and advertise, but excessive freebies is a waste. When notepads, pens, and pencils are given out by companies to the extent far beyond any need, that is wasteful enough, but it gets worse. Permanent items like customized company coffee mugs are really bad. Assuming you even like drinking your coffee while advertizing a product you use in your business or personal life, a ceramic coffee mug should last for many years. So if you receive a freebie mug you shouldn't need another for a long time, but they keep coming.

There are many categories of freebies. Many freebies are virtually forced on you. An example is that of packaged condiments and white rice that is invariably included with Chinese food takeout around here and presumably everywhere else. When my order includes a large pork fried rice, why must I expect 2 containers of white rice as well, even when I specifically request “no white rice”? And 5 or 6 packets of soy sauce and duck sauce I don't use. These should be items free by request, not automatically included.

At this time of year, my wife and I choose which, of the many, freebie wall calendars we will use for the year. The unrequested rest go to waste.

The same goes for free add-ons. One of my least favorites is the “collectible vase” sold with flower bouquets. Really? We have way more collectible vases than we will ever use, but bouquets are often sold in them and I have to wonder how many of these permanent products are used during the life, or I guess more appropriately death, of a flower bouquet and then thrown out?

The list goes on and on: refrigerator magnets, key fobs, stickers, thumb drives (usually small capacity), drink coozies, “baseball caps”, etc.

Another one of my least favorites is the freebie given as a “reward” for purchasing or donating. “Renew your subscription/membership today and get a free” whatever. These things CAN be useful, BUT, if you already have more shopping totes (you should by now) than you need, or already have an umbrella, or whatever, accepting another one is wasteful.

So, you get the idea. Please decline any freebies that you don't really need. Our planet needs us to minimize waste.

A New Years Day look to the future

This blog post marks the end of my holiday break. I have been debating the theme for my first blog of the new year. I have purposely minimized the end-of-year fiscal cliff debate and deal from consideration. There are plenty of commentators on that subject, though I do have some opinions on the bigger picture and the implications that arise from that issue.

What I would like to start out with is an issue that I have touched on before and will continue to in the future. That issue is the impact of humanity on our planet, and how we can change our culture in order to minimize the negative results of that impact.

A long time ago, I remember hearing an environmental concept: “an environmental fight to save something can never be truly won, for threats to its existence will keep coming back; but once the fight is lost, in many cases it is lost forever.” I believe this is generally true. Sure, there are conditions where the loss is somewhat superficial and could be restored to a large extent by the abandonment of the threat and a plan to reclaim the lost condition. But, for the most part, environmental losses are not prone to being reversed, and when reversals are desired and attempted, they are usually very expensive.

2012 being a presidential election year in the United States, we endured a year of debate over policies covering many aspects of national policy. Many of those policy arguments were aimed at what was perceived to be the best interest of people. Sometimes short term best interests, sometimes long term best interest. I question the preeminence of the best interest of people in many policy debates. The reason for that is that I believe the tendency for self interest of the individual or group to trump the wider best interest of all of the people degrades the value of the argument.

There was much interest in Paul Ryan's obsession with Ayn Rand and her belief that if everyone acted in their own self interests the interests of the whole would be best realized. While that obsession was derided and even disavowed by Mr. Ryan himself, the premise was never analyzed to my satisfaction beyond the basic Randian versus Keynesian argument of government taxing and spending.

I would like to look at the greater picture. How does our system function, and how would it best function, to produce the largest long term benefit to humanity. In this context I would like to posit the argument that we should make policy decisions based on the impacts of those decisions on our planet, because I believe that would result in the best outcome for the people. We, as humanity exists today, have become an overwhelming over-consumer of the finite resources of our planet. Continued policy decisions based on the benefits those decisions have for people to enjoy, almost certainly means that the planetary resources will continue to be depleted. People will chose to ignore that fact and applaud that their lives have been enriched by the policy. This is how it generally works today, and that needs to change, because that is a loss for the environment and those losses are generally permanent.

What would be a better paradigm is if decisions were made in the best interest of the planet. Protecting what is left of our environment benefits everyone. We all (meaning all of humanity; past, present, and future) live better lives with abundant clean air and water, where our food supply and food production is safe and sustainable, and where our shelter is also clean, safe, and sustainable. Self interest does not promote these results. Powerful individuals and groups acting in their own self interest consume resources at an unsustainable level, whether they are aware of it or not. Failing to consider the long term results of our self interest will impact future generations in an immensely negative way. How many of us, when we consider our own consumptive decisions, include contemplation of whether or not our great great grandchildren will be able to share that type of consumption, and if not, consider that narcissistic consumption undesirable.

Economic growth is something that is generally believed to be necessary. I have wondered for years what economists think, if they do at all, about the long term future of our planet within the context of economic growth. Do they really think that Gross Domestic Product can grow infinitely?
GDP consists of the value of all goods and services produced. Well those goods and services are also consumed. So we might consider producing a metric for Gross Domestic Consumption. That is one way that might enlighten the consideration of the sustainability of our consumption. Production sounds like such a positive thing. We need to consider consumption, and in doing so include the fact that unsustainable consumption is a decidedly negative thing. As it is now the United States is consuming more than we produce, so that we are depleting the world's resources not just our own. And the larger threat is that we are exporting our consumeristic culture to countries that have the potential to consume at a level that could dwarf our own.

So, we must think of the future. We must cultivate a vision of that future where sustainability is the primary goal, supplanting growth as the stabilizer of the economy. We must see that the good of the planet is the good of the people.

Explaining the difference in opinion on the issue of letting the Bush era tax cuts expire on the wealthiest Americans.

I would like to provide the service to the American people of explaining the difference in opinion on the issue of letting the Bush era tax cuts expire on the wealthiest Americans.

It is really quite simple. Though everyone knows that letting these tax cuts expire will in no way balance the budget by itself, everyone knows that it would help. Most Americans want the wealthiest Americans to help. The wealthiest have seen their incomes rise prodigiously as the rest have mostly seen wage stagnation, assuming they still have a job. A large percentage of the wealth in America is concentrated in the top tier wealthy and continues to flow in that direction.

So, given these facts, what is the source of the difference in opinion? It is NOT that the average American thinks that by letting the tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans expire will balance the budget. And it is NOT that the wealthiest Americans think that tax cuts cost American jobs, because these tax cuts will hurt the “job creators” to the extent that they will reduce hiring, or worse yet lay off those that they currently employ. No, these are not the reason for the difference of opinion on the tax cut expiration issue. So, the question remains, what is the reason for the difference of opinion?

Well here it is:

The reason that congress is locked in a battle over the expiration of these tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans is because the average American is feeling like the rich are getting richer and that they are in a state of economic stagnation at best or, worse, in a state of continued decline. They want the wealthy to help the country by paying more into the country that has provided the means for them to achieve the wealth that they are enjoying. They want the wealthy to pay. They do not want the employees of the wealthy to pay. They do not want the companies that the wealthy own that employ people to pay. They want the wealthy to pay. Out of their own personal income. Yes that extravagant income which has the net worth of the wealthy growing so much over the past few decades, while the average American has been stuck in stagnation. They want them to pay, take a financial hit just like the rest of us, not pass it on to their employees (assuming they are indeed job creators).

The wealthy, meanwhile, see as an obvious reality that if their tax rates revert to what they were before the Bush era tax cuts, then they would obviously not pay those taxes in a way that would diminish their own personal income and net worth. They would obviously take it out on their employees instead. So they would reason: no employee raises this year (again) because I need to use that money to offset the increased taxes I might have to pay. I need to keep my own income growing so screw them, I'm the job creator. And if that is not the way they think, it is the way they act and the way they are seen to think. I am talking perception here.

To state it more concisely, average Americans want the wealthy who have benefited the most from the economy of the last few decades to pay more of their own income wealth in taxes to help our country's fiscal problems, while the wealthy want to continue to hold the cards and protect their wealth while blackmailing the rest of us into protecting their interests.

That, my friends, is why there is a difference in opinion on the issue of letting the Bush era tax cuts expire on the wealthiest Americans.

Corporate Welfare fails miserably

I have been against Corporate Welfare for as long as I can remember. I have argued against the subsidization of corporations, especially large ones, in the many ways that they are subsidized. Promoters of “free markets” tend to go silent on this issue (similar to how promoters of a meritocracy also promote the abolition of the inheritance tax). They justify subsidies as being “pro jobs” or “pro growth”, or providing synergies that provide benefits to the community overall (local, county, state, and/or federal as applicable).

Subsidies can take many forms; Tax breaks, loan guarantees, job training, etc. It can be easy to make an argument that these subsidies are beneficial. That easy argument can be severely flawed but convincing nonetheless.

The New York Times published an article by Louise Story on December 1^st that goes into detail describing the practice and the scope and scale of these “incentives”. The article is long, giving many examples of these incentives failing at providing the benefits promised to the community. There is also an impressive searchable database showing, state by state, how much public money is being spent or deprived from public coffers and the corporations that are receiving these benefits.

I will leave the details to the NYT article, but I would like to point out something that the article does not address directly. Though the article points out that these corporations are obligated to their shareholders to seek any and all incentives that could maximize their profits, the point is lost that those increased profits benefit the shareholders. So to reiterate: indirectly, the tax incentives and other public gifts to these corporations are benefiting the shareholders. And so, with around 80% of the entire stock market wealth owned by the top 10%, and only about 2-1/2% of the stock market wealth owned by the bottom 60%, these tax incentives are not only benefiting the corporations and their ridiculously high paid executives, but they also benefit the wealthy, at the expense of the taxpayers.

The wealthy (consider the Bush tax breaks now being debated to avoid the “fiscal cliff”) and large corporations share the tendency to threaten governments and the people that if they are not pandered to they will, like a playground bully, take their ball and leave. 

There are many examples of how an idea originates, and then, as it is implemented and copied, becomes nullified by that replication. In this case, for example, if a state offers incentives to a corporation to locate there, they may get the factory or whatever and benefit. But if all states offer incentives, the playing field has thus been re-leveled and the result is that the only real beneficiary is the corporation while the benefactor financing that is the taxpayer.

So, read the New York Times article, check out how your state subsidizes corporations, and think about this the next time you are asked about what should be cut in government spending.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/us/how-local-taxpayers-bankroll-corporations.html?hp

Hang your clothes to dry them, even indoors

Drying clothes in a dryer takes a lot of energy. You may have taken some steps to decrease your home energy usage, but if you still dry all of your clothes in a clothes dryer, you have the opportunity to save some serious energy.

Before I get too far into it, yes, I realize that there are some clothes items, due to their material and the whole wrinkle issue that are high maintenance items that beg to be dried at least partially in a dryer. If you have those types of issues, read on and at least minimize dryer time.

When it is hot or even warm out, hanging your clothes on an outdoor clothes line is a great way to save energy drying your clothes, while giving them a nice outdoor freshness. The added benefit of saving energy is compounded a bit by the fact that you are avoiding adding heat to your home in your laundry area that emanates from your dryer during a dry cycle. This added heat increases the energy usage in cooling your home if you use air conditioning or makes your warm house warmer.

In much of the Northern Hemisphere, it is getting pretty cold outside these days. I hang my clothes outside until about this time of year. They will dry even on the coldest days if there is a good wind, or you get them out early in the morning. They even have a more crisp fresh smell, too.

But, and here's the really great energy saving tip, as the outdoor drying season comes to a close, hang your clothes inside.

Yes, inside. And I don't mean one of those collapsable wooden racks, though I do use one to supplement my clotheslines. And yes I am talking indoor clotheslines. We have two indoor clotheslines in our house.

The first is right in the laundry area of our unfinished basement. I have hung a couple of crossbars from the floor joists and strung clothesline between them. This provides some great drying space right near the washer. It has enough capacity for a fair amount of laundry and is more or less out of the way.

The second indoor clothesline is in our guest room. We rarely have guests and this clothesline has the capacity for another decent load of laundry. The wooden rack takes any small strays that these two can't handle. So, how is this clothesline set up? Well, in our case, we live in a log home and I put a row of decorative hand wrought nails on two opposing beams on the ceiling and have lengths of clothesline with loops at the ends that I hang on the nails between the beams. When we have guests, it is a 10 second job to lift the lines off of the nails.

So, you don't have a log home? No problem. Just use your window frames. If you put a row of nails down through the tops of your window, or even door, frames (actually sort of behind your frames and into the stud wall framing surrounding your windows) you can string clothesline between opposing windows or even diagonally across the corner of a room.

The energy saving benefits of hanging your clothes indoors at this time of year are increased by the drying process. All of that water is evaporating into your house, humidifying your air. This time of year is tends to be very dry indoors due to the effects of running your furnace, heaters, woodstove, or whatever you do to keep your house warm. Many people use humidifiers to increase the moisture in their indoor air. These invariably use energy, adding more cost to what you already spend on winter heating. If you must use your dryer for some clothes and you have an electric dryer, you can install an exhaust diverter to reclaim the moisture. DO NOT use one of these if you have a propane or natural gas dryer as your exhaust contains combustion gases.

With the size of the average house what it is, surely you can find a location to put at least one set of clotheslines up to help save you money and save the planet.

Replace the Child Tax Credit with a Child Tax Adjustment.

I have a lot of ideas that would be considered by most to fall into the category of “thinking out of the box”. This is one of them. While its implementation would be difficult to say the least, I believe in the premise if not the plan, and hope it provides something to ponder for those with open minds.

When I was in college, and coming into my own as a deep thinking adult, I devised a concise synopsis of my views of one of the most important issues facing mankind. Here is my quotable statement:

“The number one root cause of all of the major problems in the world today is global human overpopulation” -Brett Cherrington circa 1978.

While I have written of the problem of overpopulation before and will again, this time I am putting out an idea that I came up with years ago that may be something that it is time to promote. With the “fiscal cliff” (no sidebars on that name) looming, and the parties posturing in predictable ways, taxes are a big issue. While there are many specifics to consider, I am here focusing on taxes as a method of incentivising personal decision making. In particular, regarding overpopulation, the tax incentives for procreation. The current tax incentive is actualized by the child tax credit. Let me state; it is a self-evident truth that we need children and families. The size of those families, however, needs to be limited. It is unacceptable to tell anyone that they may not have offspring. It is much more acceptable to consider the limitations of our planet, the enormity of the human population, the certainty that it will become more enormous, and our need to limit that increase as much as possible.

My idea is one that deals with this in a way that provides pro-family incentives for small families. This proposal would be address several factors in the debates on family planning, taxes, and entitlements.

So, here it is:

Replace the Child Tax Credit with a Child Tax Adjustment.

My idea for a Child Tax Adjustment (CTA) would double the current Child Tax Credit (CTC) for the first child. Very pro-family, this would help young families by providing additional resources for them to spend on bringing up their child. The CTA for the second child would be zero, with no additional tax adjustment. The family is now in a position exactly where they would have been under the CTC (2 children and CTCx2). This is pro-family too, but provides no change in incentivization from our current system. The CTA for the third child would be a tax equal to the CTC[at this point (CTCx2)-CTC=CTC so this third child decreases the tax adjustment from CTCx3 under the current system to CTCx1 under my proposal]. The CTA for the fourth child would be a tax double the CTC [(CTCx2)-(CTCx2)=0 providing no tax benefits or penalties for this family's procreation choices], the fifth triple the CTC [(CTCx2)-(CTCx3)=(-1CTC) providing a procreational disincentive, and so on with increaseing disincentives for each additional child. This is a disincentive to excess procreation. It in no way prohibits this additional procreation, but does provide an incentive to limit family size, and in the collective, limit population growth.

I am aware that there are plenty of circumstances that would need to be addressed. Here is a sampling:

• Grandfathering (statutory continued acceptance of) of all children born prior to/within a year of adoption (of the law). There is no intention to penalize people for decisions made prior to this tax provision.

• Multiple births would be exempt and count as a single birth. For those conceived with medical reproductive enhancement, perhaps a compromise figure would be appropriate to mitigate any attempt to use medical technology to outflank this loophole.

• Availability of contraceptives would need to be essentially universal. Just as abortion needs to be available because mistakes and accidents do happen, to penalize the poor who may not have a realistic availability of contraceptives would be unacceptable.

• Safety nets for the poor would need to provide for the children while maintaining the disincentive against continued procreation aimed at the parents.

• Some provision for penalizing the wealthy for excessive procreation must be included to prevent a situation where the wealthy can have large families just because they can afford it. Their offspring would likely be greater consumers of our earth's resources, and inequities must be avoided where possible.

• There are religious ramifications of this idea that many will find objectionable.

I am sure there are many more issues that could be brought into the discussion, but I hope I have provided some food for thought. The impracticality of ideas such as these may seem to condemn them to the dust bin of crazy ideas, but as our planet strains under the load of our human population, and our economy strains under the load of providing services to that population, these ideas may seem less extreme.

One of the benefits of my idea that may be easily overlooked is the financial boost that a couple (or even a single parent, though that is another topic and in this case perhaps a disincentive to planned single parenthood could or should be considered) would receive on the birth of their first child. This boost could improve the early childhood health and education of our children, and help young families handle the new financial burden that having a child bestows upon them.

We as humans many times ignore the tough issues until they become critical. The issue of climate change is a prime example of that tendency. The problem of global human overpopulation is huge and growing larger. All arguments that it is a problem under control or that deride the seriousness of the situation or that beg for more children for purposes of workforce enhancement, or for providing a demographic bailout for an indebted society, must be exposed as the irrelevant, weak, and counterproductive arguments that they are. We must address overpopulation. After all....

“The number one root cause of all of the major problems in the world today is global human overpopulation”.

Time to step up and do your part

Now that we can finally put electoral politics behind us it is time for some action.

Environmentalism seems to have finally begun to reach the masses. After decades of denial, that seemed way too easy to succumb to by the average citizen, there was a move towards “green” in our social discourse and consumption options. Much of that was just “green washing”, and that is an issue that still needs to be addressed, but there is progress being made. People realize that though scientists refuse to find definite climate change causality in any one weather event, there is near universal scientific agreement that the alarming trends in extreme weather events is definitively caused by global warming which is caused by humans introducing large amounts of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.

So what can you do? Well there is a near limitless list of things you can do. What do I suggest? Anything. Just do SOMETHING.

My own approach, and that which I try to influence others to try, is what I call “Just one thing”. The basic premise of my approach is that to avoid being overwhelmed by all of the things you can do to change your impact on our planet, you do “just one thing” and embrace it. Do it until you can't imagine NOT doing it. You will find that no matter what you choose, because you will naturally choose something that you deem doable, you will find it to be a viable option and not terribly difficult to make a permanent change in your life. You will likely feel good about that change. You may wonder why it took you so long to make that change. All in all, it will feel and BE good.

So what is next after you make that change in “just one thing”? Choose another “one thing”. Wash rinse repeat.

With this method you can make incremental changes in your attitudes and behaviors that can have a significant impact on your life, and when combined with everyone else's “just one thing” have a significant impact on the planet's future.

We have made steps toward a sustainable future, but we are no where near it yet. We all need to do our part. Please, do “just one thing”.

Suggestions to start your change:

Buy just one LED light bulb - we need economies of scale to bring prices down and there are already good products out there for the cost of what you might throw down for something insignificant, though priced much higher than incandescent or compact florescent bulbs.  I have a number of different LEDs in my house and am quite pleased with their function and energy savings.

Turn down your LED TV - I use the ECO settings on my TV to decrease the LED backlight brightness to save energy.  Using a watt meter  I have found my TV can save over half of its energy usage this way.  For news and most shows the picture is fine and I can always turn this feature off for a particular movie or show if I want the brilliance my TV can provide.

Use your microwave to heat water for tea or hot chocolate, etc - microwaves are the most efficient way to heat water.  Little to no energy is wasted.  Some may prefer to heat food on the stove, believing that there is some quality degradation using microwaves, but heating water with microwaves is an energy saver.

Buy something that was produced locally - disregard the minor cost difference, just pay a bit more to help a local fellow citizen and save transportation energy, too.

Hang your clothes to dry them - wait a minute, this one just might deserve its own blog post.......

 

Man Made Climate Change or God's Will, you decide

As the seemingly endless series of extraordinary weather events and trends goes on and on, with no sign of a return to normalcy, every person on the planet needs to make a personal determination of their own opinion of the cause. That opinion will become a part of the larger social discourse. The discourse on these weather trends has become, whether overt or oblique, a choice between believing the overwhelming worldwide scientific consensus and believing that these changes are acts of God.

The danger I see, both potentially and actively, is that the large group of those who fall into the latter category may, by their belief in God's Will, fail to act, or encourage their political representatives to act, to mitigate the causes of that climate change.

It should be said that the deniers of climate change have to a large extent come around to admitting that climate change does indeed exist. They do however seem to hold on to the assertion that these changes are not due to the actions of humans. Thus their belief in the cause being God's Will.

The danger is that with this belief that climate change is God's Will, there is no reason to address its causes. Any efforts to reduce the production of greenhouse gases is seen as a colossal waste since that effort addresses something not seen as the cause, and is incapable of effecting the “real” cause, God.

So, in the social discourse, the believers in science and the man made influence of carbon dioxide production in climate change, argue that we need to change our worldwide energy policy to a future paradigm of sustainability. Meanwhile, the God's Will believers see the fact that there are fossil reserves that could provide our energy needs for over a hundred years, and see no reason not to burn it. Never mind the CO2 emissions, nor the environmental destruction involved in extracting those fossil fuels, from oil spills to mountain top removal, etcetera.

As people endure the extremes of weather events, be they increased tornadoes, floods, blizzards, hurricanes, or heat waves, they need to think of whether or not they would wish the same, and worse, on their descendants. Much is made of the national debt in the United States, and how we should not leave our children and grandchildren with the debt we have created. My question is, what do these same people think about what we are leaving to our children and grandchildren by way of a degraded environment.

We can address climate change. We cannot cure it. It will continue to happen. We have already set a course for climate change but we can prevent a worsening effect.

Something to consider is the “what if” question. The “what if” question is the question of “what if you are wrong.” There are the believers in science, whose propensity to believe in science includes the knowledge that science is an evolving and ever improving venture. We believe that we are influencing climate change and that we should minimize that influence in the effort to minimize the negative effects of climate change. What if we are wrong? If we are wrong, but our policies have been embraced, we will have transitioned to a sustainable energy policy earlier than we otherwise would have, a greater share of our fossil fuel resources will have been preserved for the fair use of future generations, and our environment will be much less degraded in ways unrelated to climate change.

If you believe in the God's Will causation of climate change, what if you are wrong? What if you are wrong, but your policies have been embraced? Not only will climate change accelerate and become worse, but there will be more pollution, oil spills, mountaintop removal, and degradation of the environment we are leaving to our children and grandchildren. The coastal problems we leave to them will be worse due to higher rates of rising sea levels. There will be lower levels of natural resources to leave to them as we continue to exploit their limited quantities.

So, when it comes to the “what if” question, I will stick with the believers of science. I choose to err on the side of caution when faced with the specter of major global degradation. I choose to believe the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community. I hope you do too.

One way you may act on your beliefs is to vote for candidates that more closely supports science based policy. Please vote.

Make your own assessments and form your own opinions

I recently had an interaction with a college-aged friend of mine. I asked him:

What issues do you base your support of your choice of presidential candidate on, and why?

The response I got included a reference to being raised by a like minded partisan parent. The inference being that following a parent's political affiliation is something of a given.

While this was a brief, narrow interaction, the point I would like to make about this response, regardless of the particular subject is, that the virtual inheritance of opinions, viewpoints, and affiliations is something that I find problematic in our worldwide humanity.

As a father, I have tried to provide my opinions to my own son on a wide variety of subjects from politics to religion to economics to the environment, and more. So what is it that I am saying? Am I being hypocritical? No. While I have provided my opinions, as a father what I hope for, rather than my son blindly following my opinions, is that my son thoughtfully forms his own opinions based on as much information as possible, and that includes information from many sources both in line with and opposed to mine.

I do not know the statistics of how closely each successive generation follows the politics, religion, and other important social and personal affiliations of their parents.  But, I do think the more those opinions and affiliations are formed by a thoughtful informed personal analysis the better, whether they end up lined up with the dogma of their parents or not.

Freedom, Responsibility, The Common Good and Taxes

Everyone wants freedom.  A much smaller percentage wants responsibility.

In our democracy, we vote for our elected representatives, and we vote for those we hope will structure our society in the way closest to the way we would structure it ourselves.  This is, of course, a compromise.  It is likely that no one agrees with everything that their representatives says or does.  So we vote for the candidate that speaks to the freedoms we value, and the responsibilities that we see as valuable as well.

Everyone wants their freedoms.  But everyone does not necessarily want everyone else to have the freedoms that everyone else wants.  This creates divisions in society.

Everyone has responsibilities.  Identifying and agreeing on responsibilities is also divisive in our society.

One of the primary responsibilities is the awareness and cognition of the issues that form our society. And for our society to function optimally, the citizenry must view freedoms and responsibilities from the perspective of the common good.

The common good has lost its place in our society.  Some find infringement on their personal freedom (but not necessarily their threats to someone else's  personal freedom) a threat to our overall freedom.  In this we find hypocrisy reigns supreme.  And that hypocrisy is seen in the case of responsibility as well.

Narcissism as a basis for voting for our government representatives not only creates bad government, it also provides the platform for a more and more polarized government.  Narcissism hates taxes because taxes take from ourselves.  It is easy to vilify taxes.  So the constant vilification of taxes makes it difficult to have a cogent discussion on any subject that involves the levying of taxes.  We need to have that discussion.  We need to honestly look to the future we hope for and realistically determine how to get there.  Government can do things that the private sector cannot or will not do.  Paying for these things, in a progressive way, with a tax policy that does not redistribute wealth towards the top, as it is now, is necessary. 

We need to return to a more progressive tax.  But in addition to letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans, we need to phase out the Bush tax cuts for the rest of us.  We need everyone to have "skin in the game', even those whose needs have them receiving government assistance.  We cannot afford to have tax avoidance be the guiding force of our society.  Taxes are necessary.

We need the discussion to be about the contents of our budget, and how we are shaping our society for the future, not just about how we can cut our government so we can avoid taxation as much as possible. 

Mitt Romney, Bain Capital, Staples, and job creation

While it is true that during this presidential election year I have not gotten particularly political in my blog posts, it is not something that I have purposely avoided. My intention for this blog is to post my thoughts on various subjects that I think about and consider insufficiently discussed in the media or in our general public discourse.

That being said, I have watched as the presidential campaigns have made points that favor their positions and accomplishments and have made points that call into question those put forth by their opponent. One particular point that I have not seen questioned in the way that I have considered it is the allegation that Mr. Romney has “created jobs” by virtue of the Bain Capital involvement with Staples. Well, I question it. I believe the reality of the job creation of Staples is misrepresented.

Staples has certainly created a large number of jobs....for Staples employees. In doing so, I believe that a larger number of jobs have been lost by those companies that Staples drove out of the marketplace.

It may be argued that Staples has improved the “productivity” of that sector of the market, and that may be true. But, that type of productivity is part of what I refer to as the “Walmartification” of our economy. Walmartification is the replacement of huge numbers of small businesses with large, multinational corporations that feed on American's obsession with low prices. Not that low prices are a bad thing, but low prices leveraged by the demands of these large corporations over its suppliers to force lower and lower prices are detrimental in a number of ways.

These low price demands degrade the quality of products and force outsourcing of production jobs to low wage markets, which most often means China. We have seen the quality of many, if not most, products decline in the face of these demands. Product longevity is disastrously low. Americans in their lust for low prices, seem content to have this be the case using the justification that the replacement cost for junk products is low. Of course that low price (low quality) is what created the need for replacement in the first place.

So, when Staples comes to town, small office supply stores that provided goods and services to small businesses are priced out of existence by the heavy hand of corporate competition based on these low price models. These local office supply stores, electronics stores, furniture stores, and others that are put out of business are creating job losses that are not put into the calculation of how many jobs are created/lost by the success of Staples. Meanwhile, the quality and longevity of the products declines creating waste that our planet cannot afford.

Another significant effect of Walmartification is the trajectory of the “money trail”. Prior to the “big boxification” of the office supply business, profits in this market were going to the owners of small office supply stores. In the Staples model, corporate profits go to the investors. Local money no longer remains local. Other small businesses which have become Staples customers, save a bit of money on cheaper office goods, so they think it is a good thing. But, there are less small businesses in the community by virtue of the loss of local office supply stores and others driven out by big box competition.

Improved “productivity” is a good thing when measured by the goal of out-competing your rivals. But, it is questionable as a source of net job creation. When more and more production is possible by less and less people, less people are employed as a result. Concurrently, the financial benefits of that increased productivity are shared by fewer and fewer people. This results in a redistribution of wealth towards the top, meaning the investor class. So our collective affinity and demand for low prices creates a downward spiral of prices, quality and employment, while the money trail leads more and more to the wealthy, creating more and more need for low prices for everyone else, leading to a continued downward spiral......

Real job creation is not accomplished by winning market share in an existing market.  Real job creation is creating jobs that provide new goods and services to a willing marketplace that were not being provided before that job creation.

The take-away for this post is that one should consider the realities of Mr. Romney's claims of job creation using Staples as his prime example when that job creation is based on one company's success in creating jobs for that particular company, and that that claim does not necessarily mean that the net effect on jobs, and the quality of products in the marketplace are positive.  So, do you believe Romney's claims that he knows how to create jobs?  Do you think he has created jobs?  Does his model for job creation seem like a good thing to you? 

The greatest challenge humanity has ever faced

Humanity is facing a challenge that is beyond anything it has faced before. This challenge transcends all social, political, cultural, religious, national, and political boundaries. The most daunting aspect of this challenge is that it requires cooperation among all factions of all of these divisive boundaries. Global human overpopulation affects us all. Taking responsibility for addressing this problem is contrary to the interests of many of these factions. Many cultures and religions consider procreation a blessing to be enjoyed to it's fullest. Family values are seen as justification for multiple offspring. In some areas child mortality rates have greatly improved, while historic procreation rates remain high, increasing family size.

All of the diverse reasons to ignore the problem of overpopulation have caused our numbers to soar. Our planet is suffering under the pressures of all of these consumers. We must create a new procreational paradigm. The focus should be on the young, for they are, or will be, the procreators. We must focus their attention on the quality of life that will be available for their child(ren). All procreators are responsible for their own contribution to the problem of overpopulation. Procreators that ignore this new paradigm can have a huge impact when multiplied by potentially billions.

Economics must not be allowed to provide an excuse for continuing our population growth. The economic model of each successive generation being larger than the last and propping up the economy of the previous generation is unsustainable. We must change those institutions that rely on this model. This will be a transitional change, so it must start now.

If we as humans do not want procreation limited by laws, as China has done, then we must actively promote the cause of small family size and limited procreation by choice. If this is not accomplished, on a global scale, there will be a need to create legal limits in the future by all countries worldwide. This will create a situation where cultures clash. We must act now to promote limited procreation globally across all cultural and political borders.

In order for this necessary change in our collective attitude towards family size we must add this issue to our social discourse. In doing so, we must “come out of the closet” and be willing to discuss the matter openly.  Breaking the taboo of speaking about family size is important.  While doing so, it is important that we focus on the “unconceived”. Educating the young is the most important goal. It is irrelevant to confront those who already have large families, other than to educate about overpopulation and prevent them from having additional children if they are still in the childbearing years. No one should ever be directly critical of children already born. That's water under the bridge. The focus needs to be on the future.

As we become more vocal about the responsibility of all humans to limit our procreation within our own culture, we are then in a more viable position to spread the discussion to other cultures. Some of these other cultures are increasing their populations at an alarming rate. There is no time to lose in educating these cultures. Educating women has been shown to be the most effective way to decrease reproductive rates.

There must be a international discussion on overpopulation that supercedes any political, economic, or cultural interests.  There are those who consider the choice of family size a human rights issue.  That must change.  The greater human right must become the right to live on a planet that has a sustainable human population.

It's the jobs, stupid

Jobs. It's the jobs, stupid.

No, it's not the economy, as it was when James Carville coined the phrase, it's jobs.

Both parties are telling voters how they are the better party to put unemployed back to work. What I have not heard from either party is how exactly they intend to create the atmosphere necessary to create enough of the right kind of jobs.

The Republicans fall back on their assertion that if we guarantee that the wealthy individuals and the corporations sitting on huge cash reserves get to be even more wealthy and retain ever higher profits without the annoyance of paying reasonable taxes on those financial resources, then they will create jobs. What they do not answer is why, when they are presently vastly wealthy and flush with cash NOW, they are not creating these jobs NOW. Why is it that they are holding the jobs hostage until they get even more?

The Democrats have failed to get support for their incremental vision. They are promoters of reasonable increases in a depleted level of public sector employment, which has been devastated by tax cuts and budgetary polarization. And through the American Jobs Act they have put some proposals out there that look to the future. But through an inadequate effort to gain the support of the American people, and resistance from Republicans, the American Jobs Act was split up and has had mixed results in its implementation.

As someone who tries to look at the big picture in the long term, I would like to put the question not on the supply side, but on the demand side.

We have the opportunity during low employment to guide the market for re-employment. So, what is it that we need?

By that I mean, what goods and services do we as a country, and a planet, need?  I believe we need to take a long hard look at where we want to be as a society in the future and what our needs will be, and take that as a set of goals used to formulate a plan for what types of jobs we need to create to achieve those goals.

While the Democrats have put forth some goals relating to sustainable energy production and the jobs it creates, we need a greater breadth of visualization of the future and a more integrated plan for transitioning from the unemployment of the present to an employment of the future, not a plan to return to the employment of the past.

An example of this visualization of the future is the housing market. I believe that our culture has led to a an unsustainable view of what housing should be. In a country where family size has thankfully diminished, over the last half century, our housing production has concentrated on larger and larger homes. These homes are excessively wasteful and as our energy needs rise, unsustainable. So, to look to the housing market as an engine to boost the economy by building more and more large homes, is as counterproductive to the future we need as drill baby drill is to our energy future.

My proposal regarding this example is to re-train construction workers, especially local independent contractors, to become energy efficiency contractors to update the energy efficiency of our housing infrastructure. We need to come to grips with the fact that our existing housing stock, which it is unrealistic to replace, is inefficient and should be retrofitted for maximal energy efficiency. This effort, when enacted in a widespread national manner, would put many people back to work. The fact that these efficiency efforts pay for themselves over time, unarguably classifies them as investments. Policies should be promoted that allow homeowners to update their homes without having to come up with the initial cost, but rather shares the benefits of the energy savings over time with investors who finance the updates. That investor pool could be public, private, or both.

So my point, merely exemplified by the housing proposal above, is that the jobs issue which is so central to the upcoming elections, is one that should be an issue framed by a progressive demand side vision, as opposed to a regressive supply side trickle down formula.

Another way to transition to our better future

We as individuals generally vote in our own self interest.  That is why the rhetoric coming from both campaigns is mostly about "the economy and jobs".

In an ideal world, the economy is vibrant and everyone who wants and/or needs to work has a good job.  But in that ideal world, that vibrant economy does not consume resources in an unsustainable way, does not pollute or degrade our planet, and those jobs provide a positive contribution to our collective economic culture.

In the real world, the candidates must contend with constituents that have and need jobs that do pollute and degrade our planet.  And they need votes.  So, we see them pandering to those interests though we know that they know that those interests are not in the best interest of our nation or planet. 

The example that we have seen recently is the pandering to the "coal states."   Most areas of coal production have few jobs available that are not in the coal industry.  Scaling back on coal would devastate the economy in these areas.  So the candidates give speeches and air ads that support those jobs. 

As in my last blog post, I see this as an opportunity to transition these industries into sustainable energy.  By providing a commitment to a continued transition away from coal production and into sustainable energy production in these areas, coal jobs could be protected in the short term, and workers could be retrained for the jobs of our energy future.

Transition some military spending to new energy technologies

There is plenty of discussion on the budget and the deficit and the debt.  There are competing viewpoints on what to do about it.  The "jobs" issue adds a very powerful influence on the debate.  The deficit hawks want to cut spending, but do not want to add revenue to the mix, having an aversion to raising taxes, especially on the wealthy they see as the job creators.

The inconsistency in this argument comes when there is a discussion of the Defense budget.  The deficit hawks are also defense hawks.  They talk about our need to provide for national security.  The military has programs that they would like to discontinue but Congress keeps them going.  Why?  Because it is a jobs thing.  They are really most concerned about how cuts will affect the Military Industrial Complex, specifically those military contractors in their districts.  The military has conveniently spread the wealth of their contracts nationwide so each congressperson has their own district's jobs to protect.

So, my idea is to create a system that transitions a percentage of military contracts to civilian purposes that aid in non-military national security advancement by way of energy independence, keeping these coddled contractors employing their people while moving us forward as a country.

One example of this would be to convert to progressive energy production and efficiency projects.  Solar Photo Voltaic and LED lighting production are examples.  If manufacturers could quickly retrofit factories during World War II we can do it now. 

We spend so much more than the rest of the world on the military, we can afford to cut back on that spending and re-purpose it for our future and keep people employed at the same time.

Tom Freidman "gets it right" on natural gas

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/friedman-get-it-right-on-gas.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Teach kids science by inspiring change in common realities

Some things just become so much a part of our lives that we fail to envision anything that is different.  Changing these things is difficult if no one is thinking about alternatives.  Part of our push to interest students in science should include highlighting things that have become extremely widespread yet are unsustainable and how science must provide an alternative.

The most obvious example of this is fossil fuel use.  While there is a multitude of ways we use fossil fuels, and there are many alternatives being developed for many uses, there is one that I hear little about.  That is asphalt.  For over a hundred years, paving of road surfaces with asphalt (actually a mix of asphalt and "aggregate") has become not only common, but ubiquitous.  The fact that asphalt is the most recycled product in the world is counter to, but critical to, the point that I would like to make.  It is the repaving of roads and recycling of asphalt that uses a lot of fossil fuel.  The process of recycling requires grinding the old failed road surface, loading and hauling the ground asphalt to the processing plant where it must be heated to a high temperature to be recycled, loaded and hauled to its new location, where it must be loaded into a paving machine to be laid, followed by rolling.  Road bed preparation and other incidentals add to the energy consumption in the repaving process.

So, what is my point?  Well, like most things, this situation is perpetuated by inertia.  It is what it is, and if we think of it at all, we think that this is how it always will be.  But why?  Because no one has thought of a realistic, scalable alternative.  Yet.  Do you think we will be repaving our roads in the same way, more or less, in two hundred years?  Will we have repaved the same roads the same way on a cycle of every 10-20 years (or whatever), time and time again?  I hope not.  So we should be looking for the next alternative now and until it it developed.

Our children should be inspired to see that science has the potential to change our world.  Questioning common realities, and searching for better alternatives should be part of our educational goals.  Inspiration from changes that have already been made should bolster that challenge.  Asphalt is just one example of a common reality that could be changed.  There is no limit to what other seemingly permanent fixtures of our culture that could be changed for the better.

The future real estate crisis

We have been in a "Real Estate Crisis" for a few years now.  We have all grown weary of the stories in the news relating to the various aspects of this crisis.  Stories of those who were pushed into risky mortgages they could not afford.  Stories of those who are "underwater" on their mortgages.   Stories of those who have lost their homes to foreclosure.  And stories of neighborhoods where there are lots of empty houses bringing the values of everyone else's houses down.

These are all gloomy realities.  And there are more gloomy realities.  The rise in the average square footage of American homes during decades where the average family size was falling and real middle class wages were stagnant at best, along with the rising bubble of real estate values, and the extraction of that value to fund an unrealistic rise in personal and family lifestyle set up the Real Estate Crisis.  The gloomy reality is that the higher you go the farther you have to fall.  And that fall, as we have seen by the bursting of the real estate bubble, has put us so low that recovery has been nearly non-existent.

There has been a push by some to forgive some of the debt by changing the terms of the mortgages, revaluating the properties, or otherwise making it possible for those who are at risk of losing their homes to keep them.  There are many reasons that this would be a good thing for not only the home owners, but for the overall economy.  That said, I can not help but see the bigger picture and that picture has a problem that will be with us for a longer time than the current crisis.

Owning your own home has been seen as part of the American Dream.  Home ownership has its responsibilities.  Paying the mortgage is only one of them.  Paying taxes and insurance are also a necessity.  But the problem I see, that does not get talked about in the stories of the Real Estate Crisis, is that of home maintenance.

Maintaining a house and property costs money.  As anyone who has owned a home knows, there always seems to be something that needs to be maintained, fixed, or replaced.  This could be something like a water heater, furnace, flooring, roof, plumbing, paint, you name it.  Some of these things must be done when they need to be done.  If your water heater breaks down, you will fix or replace it as needed.  But some other things, and these are the things that I believe will build into the next crisis, are less urgent and thus can and will be delayed beyond prudence, and will not only end up costing more in the long run (think failure to replace a roof that badly needs replacing and having damaging leaks) but will create a system-wide real estate quality degradation that given our difficult financial times will become a new, possibly worse, Real Estate Crisis.

Keeping the dream of solar alive

I have a dream of going "solar".  And in this case I am referring to photovoltaic electricity producing cells.  There are a lot of obstacles stopping this from happening.  Cost and available sunlight are the two greatest challenges.  We have a limited income, and we live in the woods, in the northern tier of the United States.   While tropical areas have the best solar potential, Germany has proven that significant solar capability lies in northern latitudes.  This, however, assumes good exposure.  We are nestled in the New Hampshire forest.  Oaks and pines crown over our little house and barn to a height of 80 feet and more, with an understory of birch, maple, and beech.  We love being in the woods but are considering removing over a dozen large trees which represents a significant cost in of itself.  As a side benefit, our garden could definitely use the extra sunshine.

Having wanted to do this for years, I have tried to keep some awareness of what is happening in the industry and of any available incentives that could make it easier to achieve.  This in order to keep from missing any window of opportunity that may open, or slam shut.  The news seems to have been that costs continue to fall as the technology improves.  The newer CIGS (copper indium gallium diselenide [Cu(In_xGa_1-x)Se₂] )  cells have a lot of promise, but the recently ramped up production of silicon for the older standard panels favored by Chinese manufacturers have brought costs so low that CIGS technology is having a hard time competing. 

The older technology being produced in China has had the benefit of lowering costs to the extent that the price point has allowed for a large increase in solar deployment, though as a percentage of electricity production solar remains quite small.

In my case, the increased efficiency of the more expensive CIGS technology would be beneficial in my less than optimal solar exposure.  The solar industry is in a difficult position to assess going forward.  It will continue to grow, but what the dominant technology will be and which players will succeed remains unknown. 

As I continue to work toward the time I can afford to take the leap, I keep the dream of solar alive for myself and millions of others.  The world depends on it.

Capitalism wins!

Yes, capitalism wins.  And with capitalism it is "winner takes all".

That is the problem.  With unregulated capitalism the winners take all and the losers lose.  The success of capitalism and the propensity of deregulation have resulted in our current condition of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

The biggest problem we have with the "entitlement state" is the feeling of entitlement that the wealthy have toward their wealth, and that they feel entitled to have that wealth grow at unrealistic levels regardless of the drain it has on the overall economy.

The wealthy scorn any suggestion that tax policy include the "redistribution of wealth" to return some of that money back into the system to the benefit of the middle and lower classes.  The reality is that they welcome their own participation in the "redistribution of wealth" in their own direction by using the power of their wealth to concentrate that wealth toward themselves in the highest wealth class.

I believe that not only do we need to regulate capitalism to balance the power of corporations and the top tier of the wealthy, but we need to include a strongly progressive tax structure that taxes extreme income at the historical high rates that have been successful in the past.  But, while doing so, we must also tax the middle class in a way that helps dig us out of the fiscal pit we have collectively dug ourselves.  This will slow the "recovery" of our economy, but that slow recovery will be one that adapts to lower spending by both government and families, which will be a more stable and sustainable economy.  And that is the bitter pill we really need to take.  The delusion of being able to return to policies that got us here in the first place must be exposed for the folly that it is. 

The American Dream has become just a pipe dream

The American Dream is a residual fantasy that we hold on to though it is now unobtainable by the majority of Americans.

The American Dream is defined in a number of ways.  Generally it involves the potential for upward mobility, prosperity, and the concept that each generation will live better than the generation before them.

There has been a silent assault on the American Dream over recent decades.  Capitalism combined with inadequate, ill advised, or non-existent regulation and greed have focused economic power in the hands of the few.  Excessive consumption, by individuals, families, and governments have brought expectations of prosperity and wealth to unsustainable levels, at the cost of burdensome debt.

When an individual or a family overspends and finds itself in excessive debt, it must change its ways.  It must earn more if it can, spend less, and pay down its debts.  This is made more difficult by the extra burden of the interest accruing on that debt, making the amount it will have to pay back grow over time.  Paying down this debt results in a period of decreasing prosperity, and a lower standard of living.   That period can be quite long if the debt load is large. 

Quite similarly, governments can find themselves in excessive debt, and must change their ways.  They must bring in more money if they can, spend less, and pay down its debts.  Interest payments provide a onerous burden to governments as well.

When, in the collective, a society lives beyond its means, and both the citizenry and their government have accrued large amounts of debt, prosperity declines and the "American Dream" is destined to fail.  As one generation has lived beyond its means, it has raised the bar of perceived prosperity to an unrealistic height.  The next generation not only finds that bar too high to attain for themselves, but is also saddled with the burdens of the previous generation.

This reality means that for now the American Dream has become just a pipe dream.  Any attempts to deny this truth and make policy to perpetuate the delusion will only make it worse and last longer.

You can use free geothermal air conditioning with your current central AC, here's how to do it.

Much of the country is in a heat wave. It's been in the 90s and triple digits here the last couple of days.  Yesterday, Lisa turned on the central AC in anticipation of another hot one.  We limit our AC use, this was the first time this year to break down and start it up.  There were blackouts and reports of extreme stress on the power grid.  Lots of people out there using a lot of AC energy.

Well, here's the thing.  Though I didn't tell her, when she turned on the AC, she did so at the thermostat and did not include the outdoor breaker at the compressor.  Without it, no AC.  So, I opened the basement cold air return register and let the duct fan, activated by Lisa's thermostat action, blow.  The basement, cooled by shallow passive geothermal action (in New Hampshire, the earth below 5-6 feet is at 52-53˚F all year) remains cool.  The basement air, drawn into the duct system, circulated through the house and kept the place cooler throughout the day during the highest electricity demand. 

By 8:00pm as the day had caught up with the basement's ability to cool the house (and Lisa was feeling it), I kicked in the real AC,  dropped the house temp down 4 or 5 degrees, dropped the humidity, and we were good for the night.  This morning, I switched back to just the fan (on circulation mode which doesn't run the whole time) and we are saving energy and helping out the power grid again today.

If you have central AC, give it a try.  Any amount of time not running your AC compressor saves energy and money.

Keep your house small

Keep your house small.  If your are in the market to buy a house, buy a small house.  If you own a house, resist adding on to it.

One is no longer able to claim, as has been claimed countless times to countless young adults as they establish themselves and consider purchasing their first house, that housing prices always go up.  I was told the same during the housing bubble of the late 1980s.  Perhaps you could call it the housing rush of the late 1980s.  I remember an open house where the house sold for well over the asking price within two hours of it being on the market.  We arrived at the open house and the house was already sold.  The market was crazy.  We had to buy quick or get priced out of the market.  We were told to buy as much house as we could because the more house you bought, the more of an investment base you had to reap the bounteous rewards of the ever rising housing market. 

We ended up buying a small house.  At around 1000 square feet, it served our needs.  Sure, we could have used more space. But, realistically all we really needed was more storage space. There is not much of an attic, no garage, and a small compromised basement (water infiltration during the spring snow melt), but we got by.  A few years later we had a son.  This put more pressure on the size of our house.  We were advised to add on to our house to accommodate our rising spatial needs.  A number of our friends added on to their houses as their children grew.  We too, felt the temptation as our son grew and our house increasingly seemed to lack some of the benefits of a larger house.

But larger houses consume more.  They consume more energy and materials in the construction of the house itself or of an addition.  And they consume more energy and materials year after year in heating/cooling, maintenance, and upkeep.  If you are a homeowner, the house you own is your house.  You are responsible for how that house functions as a part of our collective human impact on our planet. 

I am happy to say that we did not add on to our house.  While there were times, many times, that I felt that we should have added on in order to provide more space for our son and his friends, I now realize that it was not necessary.  We all survived.  Just as generations before us did, with larger average families and smaller average houses, we did fine.  And now that our son is away at college and, unless he boomerangs, is no longer living with us full time, we find our home quite comfortable without having added to it.

Full disclosure: We have supplemented our storage capacity.  Early on, we bought one of those small metal sheds.  This gave us a place for our lawn and garden tools, snowblower and the like.  The lifespan of that shed was shortened by a blizzard that collapsed the roof (which I repaired to get some more years out of it) but it served its purpose for 20 years or so.  Recently, I built a small barn to replace it.  This barn is large enough to not only replace the small shed but to also provide additional storage that allows for more efficient use of our basement and attic.  The key thing about the barn is that it is unattached to the house, and has no provision for heat.  If I had added on to the house, the temptation would have been to make the additional storage space unnecessarily heated space. 

Another argument for small houses is that they require proportionally less maintenance.  That means less time and money is required to maintain them.  All home owners need to budget for the maintenance of their property.  Whether it is a new roof, a coat of paint, adding insulation, or whatever, as the size of a house increases, so do the costs of upkeep.  This brings to mind another topic that I think about and that I will pursue in a separate post.

So please, think long and hard about the size of your house when considering a purchase or adding to your existing home.  Keep your house small.

Chris Hayes responds to my point regarding people's unrealistic expectations

I shot off a quick email to an NHPR call in show with guest Chris Hayes.  I didn't get to it until late but it made it as the last item discussed.  I especially liked how Chris said that David Brooks had just written a NYTimes article on the same subject the same day.

Scroll to around 93% if you want to just hear his response to my email:

http://cpa.ds.npr.org/nhpr/audio/2012/06/061212_090636.mp3

Scott Walker's win analyzed

The conventional wisdom has it that the win by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in the recall election was a referendum on support of unions, public unions in particular.  This is based on the radical restrictions imposed early in his tenure and the drama that ensued with public demonstrations, and the efforts of democrats to prevent the governor and state Republicans from eviscerating union bargaining rights.

I respectfully disagree.  I thought during the demonstrations that the public unions got the message all wrong.  They defended union bargaining rights.  That makes some sense.  But what they didn't do is to make any effort to focus the message on anything but bargaining rights and themselves.

The entire working class would love to have the benefits that the public workers enjoy.  Most do not.  And that is the problem. And that is the missing message. 

Our entire national system of retirement and pensions, inclusive of all levels of retirement security from corporate pensions to Social Security and is a system of those who have a lot to those that have very little.  With the economy as sluggish as it is, voters who have little to no retirement savings look to the public unions and their pensions and benefits, compare it to their own situation and wonder why it is that they should support public employees relatively cushy benefits and retirement with their tax dollars while they struggle and have no such security.

If unions argued that their benefits and pensions are something that they and everyone else should have access to, and that they would be working to develop a universal plan that would ensure the middle class had an equal chance at these benefits, they would have garnered more support.  But to merely say that they should have these benefits and the tax payers should foot the bill does not provide and argument that a struggling middle class voter is likely to rally behind.

So it was touted to be about bargaining rights and that was fine with Republicans because they are against unions and their bargaining rights.  But if the unions thought that they could couch their arguments to the Democrats and more importantly the Independents in terms of bargaining rights and ignore the union's benefits that non-public workers do not have, they were wrong.