Stopping global warming requires drastic income redistribution, for if the rich
keep getting higher incomes they are going to spend it on consumption,
contradicting those lovely "propensity to consume" curves that bend over and
flatten out as income rises.
Re-reading Stephen Marglin's "What Do Bosses Do? Part II" recently disabused me
of the self-flattering idea that I'd thought up the contention that people
spend on consumption whatever they get their hands on. For years I've thought
I'd come to that belief on my own but no doubt I read it in Marglin when the
article came out in URPE's Review, around 1974-'75. (Sorry I don't have the
precise citation at hand.) Here's Marglin, on page 22 of the URPE article:
"I believe households tend to spend whatever income they can lay their
hands on. Households do not
save, by and large and on the average, except inadvertently -- when
their incomes are rising faster
than they can adjust their spending."
If the rich behave that way, and their incomes hold, or worse, increase, than
catastrophic global warming is inevitable. If there is income we will spend
it. If there is "overproduction of income" we will spend it.
A May 14, 2012 NY Times science article brought all this to mind. If there's
food, we'll consume it.
Gene
A CONVERSATION WITH CARSON CHOW
A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity
<snip>
You are an M.I.T.-trained mathematician and physicist. How did you come to work
on obesity?
<snip>
The interesting question posed to me when I was hired was, “Why is this
happening?”
Did you ever solve the question posed to you when you were first hired — what
caused the obesity epidemic?
We think so. And it’s something very simple, very obvious, something that few
want to hear: The epidemic was caused by the overproduction of food in the
United States.
Beginning in the 1970s, there was a change in national agricultural policy.
Instead of the government paying farmers not to engage in full production, as
was the practice, they were encouraged to grow as much food as they could. At
the same time, technological changes and the “green revolution” made our farms
much more productive. The price of food plummeted, while the number of calories
available to the average American grew by about 1,000 a day.
Well, what do people do when there is extra food around? They eat it! This, of
course, is a tremendously controversial idea. However, the model shows that
increase in food more than explains the increase in weight.
Full at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/science/a-mathematical-challenge-to-obesity.html?hpw_______________________________________________
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