Change, by its very definition, displaces and replaces. Change often can be directed and managed, but to date, no one has ever been able to stop, contain or reverse change for long, despite perhaps slowing it down for a relatively few individuals who either are forced or simply accept a Luddite path.
In the United States, there has been a recent movement to move us back to the halcyon days of post-WWII, when as one of the few major countries on earth, we were the least damaged by the war. We had no cities to rebuild, no infrastructure that was bombed out, our war casualties while significant were mostly military personnel and our factories and power generation capacity were at a peak. Not to mention that our population was roughly half of what it is today. Simply, we had a manageable number of very productive workers, virtually no war damage and, as a result we could become the largest global economy with almost no competition.
The slogan “Make America Great Again,” now tarnished and somewhat faded, still lingers in the hopes and dreams of so many Americans for whom change has meant job displacement, industrial obsolescence on a scale we have never seen before, as well as a shift to a more highly educated work force driven so much more by information and artificial intelligence than manufacturing. Being marginalized, left behind if you will, is both unpleasant and profoundly disruptive. It is the fetid field where finding blame, using mythology to provide “solutions” and allowing anger to replace doing what must be done to adapt become easy prey for ruthlessly ambitious politicians.
The pandemic only accelerated this change, placed a particularly horrific burden on those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder and generously rewarded a decreasing number of individuals who have accumulations wealth reflective of the GDP of small nations. The rich also got to retain the value of the salaries of those let go and replaced by the automated systems, physical assets that were proprietary to the wealthy. Those at the top of the food chain, between tax cuts and deregulation, have been running away with the ball.
“In 2019, the average top CEO’s pay increased 14% from 2018 to $21.3 million. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, earned $280,621,552 in total compensation—more than 1,000 times the income of a median company employee.” Talib Visram, writing for the February 25th FastCompany.com. “MarketWatch … published a piece about the soaring U.S. CEO-to-worker pay ratio, which hit 278-to-1 in 2018 (up from just 58-to-1 in 1989 and 20-to-1 in 1965).” Forbes, 8/31/19. It’s closer to 300-to-1 today. Simply put, as CEO play rose about 1000 percent over this period, worker pay rose 12%.
“The pandemic that defined the year 2020, as The Guardian put it, ‘sharpen[ed] America’s already stark economic inequalities.’ Workers with lower pay lost their jobs while the world’s executives made even more money. Unemployment is now above 20 percent for the lowest paid workers. Worker wages currently represent a lower share of the U.S. economy than almost any time since the 1940s when the Federal Reserve began collecting the data.” AsYouSow.org, February 24th.
Forgetting about the climate change-driven death and roiling trillions of dollars of devaluation and destruction wreaking havoc in the United States alone, nothing brings more fear to red state conservatives than suggesting a major and accelerated program shifting energy reliance away from fossil fuels, mostly oil and natural gas (the obsolescence of coal seems to be accepted by now).
Utter the words “alternative energy” or a more comprehensive “Green New Deal” to such conservatives, and they will spew misinformation like a volcanic eruption. “Socialism” they will cry, dramatically misusing that word (which really means total government ownership of all resources, land and means of production) and blame anything they can on new energy technology. Even in Texas, where the big polar vortex freeze was particularly destructive to fossil fuel power generation (still most of what powers Texas), they blamed the Green New Deal (which is nowhere in Texas) and faltering wind and solar power, a small fraction of Texas power which actually endured reasonably well despite the state’s refusal to pay for weatherization upgrades.
We cannot afford to support and encourage industries that cannot sustain in the face of expected climate change disasters and, what’s even worse, continue to exacerbate the escalation of super-destructive global temperature rise. Investing more capital into these archaic industries may benefit wealthy incumbents’ preserving their assets, but this is not only an accelerator of further income inequality, it is a waste of money. Want money? Want real growth? Want more jobs? Want to lead the global economy? Look to the future, not the past!
“Our modeling, along with several other recent deep decarbonization studies, shows getting the U.S. to net-zero emissions by 2050 is feasible and would generate millions of new jobs and significant GDP growth for the U.S.,’ says Robbie Orvis, director of energy policy design at Energy Innovation, where a team used a detailed modeling tool to analyze the policy needed to get to net zero…
“Some of the necessary tech [to implement new energy systems] has dropped dramatically in cost. Solar panels are 90% cheaper than they were in 2009. Wind turbines are more than 70% cheaper. LED light bulbs are 80% cheaper. Batteries used in electric vehicles or to store renewable energy are 80% cheaper than they were in 2013. Still, even though economics are helping the transition, it won’t happen fast enough without strong policy…
“‘Transitioning to a low-carbon economy requires building and deploying a lot of new stuff, such as building and installing solar and wind power plants, installing new electric equipment in buildings, and retooling vehicle manufacturers to scale up electric vehicle production,’ Orvis says. ‘All this manufacturing and deployment means tons of new jobs and growth in U.S. manufacturing industries, and it creates a huge opportunity to revitalize the U.S. economy.
“By 2030, the transition would increase the U.S. GDP by roughly $500 million, and by 2050, roughly $1 trillion, due to several factors: It would create 3.1 million job-years (a ‘job year’ is one full-time job for one year) by 2030, and 5.5 million by 2050. As climate pollution drops, the improved air quality would also have significant health benefits, avoiding two million asthma attacks a year by 2050 and more than 6.5 million lost workdays, along with avoiding 65,000 premature deaths per year.” Adele Peters writing for the February 25th FastCompany.com.
We can no longer afford to subsize inefficient and wasteful systems just because they belong to the wealthy and politically connected, those with the greatest ability to fund campaign of ruthlessly ambitious politicians… who then do their bidding without regard to truth, ethics or even life. Can we call that “socialism for the rich”?
I’m Peter Dekom, and returning to the past is not an option, so how do we reconfigure to maximize our future?
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