“Sustainable justice” = redistribution of scarcity

Reminds me of a story I recently heard from a student who when asked by the head of charity who they expected to give to charities responded – ” well gen x are too greedy and wealthy people are too busy hoarding money so that leaves gen ys and baby boomers”, in other words students and retirees. In reality the people who gave most were gen x and wealthy people (funnily enough).
Here’s the thing – most people in developed countries are working to get paid whatever their employer is willing to pay them. The employers sell the widgets or whatever that the employees make for whatever people are prepared to pay for them.
Any concerted attempt at fiscal equalization would remove fiscal incentive from this system to the extent that the ability to generate wealth to pass on to third world countries would be lost. In truth, people in third world countries would be no better off if the entire GDP of the G 20 were moved to them today – they have no means of using those funds for ongoing wealth creation and it would simply bankrupt the G20.

The 18-member Group includes no Americans – but condemns the US and other governments for their dedication to economic growth, rather than wealth redistribution, and demands that governments play a key role in promoting “sustainability” and welfare.
Translation for the politically-impaired: “Creating wealth is bad. Redistributing wealth is good.”
And redistributing wealth is good because it’s easier for the middlemen — the NGO group functionaries self-appointing as such — to skim money in transit. And when all the wealth is redistributed, everyone will be equally poor, except, of course, for the middlemen…

These people in their tight little world obviously see “1984” as a blueprint, not a warning. Unbelievable!

Unfortunately, as Alexander Hamilton observed, men are not angels. Moreover, it defies experience and common sense to suppose that the elitist UN, UNEP and environmental activist community will ever display wisdom detached from ardent ideology – or benevolence toward the humans they seek to govern.
—————-
Yep!
So which masters are Paul and Duggan beholden to? And then we can ask the question whether those masters “will ever display wisdom detached from ardent ideology”.

Sorry, I can’t agree that a certain amount of wealth redistribution would be a bad thing – though I don’t think there’s much danger of it actually happening. I think the idea Obama is interested in spreading the riches around is laughable. He serves the interest of the tiny minority of super-rich as most world leaders do and always have done.He’s just mouthing platitudes and making promises he has no intention of keeping – which is his hallmark in everything.
But what’s wrong with universal health care? I’ve lived in the US and the UK and I know which one I’d prefer to get sick in. It doesn’t have to mean a “nanny state” and when people talk like that they’re being as irrational as any Warmist.

lazyteenager sez….
—
And I have to wonder: were there actually people who cried ‘power to the people!’, right before Che put a bullet into the back of their head?
I guess that one just got answered…

I suggest that national petitions be started in Canada and the US that mandate withdrawal from the UN. Then we can kick the leeches out of NYC and send them packing to Europe.
The Europeans have always resented the American because we have no proper breeding, never went to finishing school, ain’t got manners and culture. We just the new kids on the block in a very old neighborhood!

ps that’s what Gillard is doing to Australia bless her

Sounds a bit like this:
“We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind’s own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole . . . This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought.”
National Socialist professor of biology, Ernst Lehmann.
http://www.theatheistconservative.com/2010/01/22/green-roots-the-origin-of-ecology/

Usually the proponents of wealth distribution are government employees paid from the public purse such as politicians, academics, teachers, employees of the publicly funded media outlets such as the ABC and the BBC. Those who generate the wealth that supports these government paid proponents are usually too busy growing their businesses and providing jobs to have much time for conferences in Rio. As for Lazy Teenager, will you tell us to which masters you are beholden?

“When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
When you take wealth from one person and hand it to someone else, you remove the incentive for the first person to gain wealth in the first place. Hence in a Socialist world, all means of production must be owned by the state, with the people reduced to mere ants working to Government-set targets.
“When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
But it’s someone else’s wealth being spread around. There’s a word for that: it’s called Theft.
“When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
Imagine two brothers. Little Johnny goes out delivering papers, washing cars, and doing various odd jobs around the house for pocket money – and he’s reaping the rewards of his labour. In a few months he might even afford that new X-Box. His brother – little Billy – he’s alright, but he’s somewhat less driven than Johnny, has less ambition, and is happy to spend his free time playing with friends and watching TV – normal kid stuff.
Dad is a socialist. He believes in such things as “redistribution of wealth” and “universal fiscal equalization.” Johnny’s ready to buy his prized X-Box, but Dad can’t bear the idea that one kid will have more than the other – so he demands that Johnny hands over a proportion of his wealth to Billy. Billy feels a bit guilty, but being human doesn’t look this gift horse in the mouth. Johnny can no longer afford the X-Box and becomes disillusioned. Why even bother? He’s learned that gaining wealth is too hard because Pops just hands so much over to Billy, and he’s learned that personal success is clearly not a thing to aspire to.
Billy doesn’t get any more money out of Johnny, because Johnny doesn’t work any more, there’s no point. Besides, he gets a roof over his head and three squares a day for free – he’ll settle for that. And so there is finally genuine fiscal equalization of the two brothers. Both have f… all.
No one in their right mind would really bring up their kids this way. And yet socialists think it’s a good way to run society? Bloody arrogant fools.

I have to say, I’m not too concerned about an agenda like that. I’d be much more concerned if they’d actually proposed something reasonable. Plainly, an agenda like that, doesn’t stand a snowflake’s chance in hell of being accepted. It’s just a great example of the environmentalist bunker mentality in action. Another self-inflicted wound …
Pointman

quidsapio says:
June 19, 2012 at 2:45 am
“But what’s wrong with universal health care? I’ve lived in the US and the UK and I know which one I’d prefer to get sick in. It doesn’t have to mean a “nanny state” and when people talk like that they’re being as irrational as any Warmist.”
Man, what’s wrong is this is a Government monopoly forced on us against our will with our own money, because Government knows what’s best for us. You may value your health, but you obviously don’t value personal freedom.

As was so often the case, H. L. Mencken succinctly nailed the phenomenon:
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”

I have always thought that socialism is about the re-distribution of the cake and capitalism is about making a bigger cake. History shows us that the best outcome for the “common man” is capitalism with some degree of legislative oversight. What these people seem to be proposing is the re-distribution of a smaller cake. This is frightening. How do these delusional fools get into positions of power ?
If they want to create justice around the world they must allow under-developed countries to develop. This cannot be achieved without cheap and abundant electricity which can only come from fossil fuels or nuclear. Why not ?
Objection (1) is that we have to cut down on CO2 emissions to stop global warming. This hypothesis has been discredited in so many ways by the real world data. Climate change is happening but it’s mild, it’s not unprecedented and it’s not a problem, cf Medieval Warm Period.
Objection (2) is that resources are being depleted and we cannot continue this way. But mankind has never run out of any resource. Man is constantly researching new and better ways of doing things and before any resource is exhausted it is rendered unnecessary by new developments. Why would we expect man’s ingenuity to suddenly stop.
It is well known that developed countries have lower birth rates. In an underdeveloped country your children are your provision for old age whereas in developed countries with wealth creating infrastructure people can make advance financial provision privately or through the State. Thus there is a double benefit of development in reducing the growth in the world’s population.
If the philosophy from the Rio conference were implemented then there is no way that the current population of the Earth could be sustained. There would have to be a population reduction measured in billions. It is incumbent on those at Rio to acknowledge this and to explain to the rest of the world how they propose to bring this population reduction about.

quidsapio
I don’t know about the UK system but here in Tasmania my cousin was told a 6 year wait for cataract surgery.Needless to say she is going private and paying the difference herself.

The elitists RIO+20 political watermelon narcissists have their job cut out for them if they think they are going to force their ideological and tyrannical cult onto the rest of the world.
It appears that even the local Rio women are awake to their scheming!
The great Watermelon cult of the Green elite is dying although the stench of it’s slow decay will stay around for many years yet unfortunately.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/women-march-rio-protest-green-economy-174353168.html
Women march in Rio to protest ‘green economy’
Thousands of women representing social and farm movements marched in central Rio Monday to rail against the “green economy” advocated by the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development.
Behind a large banner from the international peasant movement Via Campesina proclaiming “the peoples are against the mercantilization of nature”, they marched several miles to the Flamengo park, the venue for the “People’s Summit” organized by civil society groups on the sidelines of the Rio+20 event.
Several hundred men closed off the march to show their solidarity.
Perched atop a truck fitted with loudspeakers, a female activist howled: “This is a march of urban and rural women against this Rio+20 charade.”
“No to green capitalism! Yes to an economy based on solidarity, yes to people’s sovereignty,” she added.

Neil Jones says:
June 19, 2012 at 2:38 am
This is the EU writ in blood.
________________________________
Very much so. From what I can see the Soviet Union and the EU were trial balloons. The Soviet Union bombed and was cut but the EU was seen as a “success” As Pascal Lamy states the European construction is the most ambitious experiment to date in supranational governance.
In the magazine the GLOBALIST: How the world really hangs together, is an
article where “Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, outlines the lessons that the world can learn from Europe.”
Annotated with [coments by me ~ gc]

Global Governance: Lessons from Europe
….What is global governance? For me, global governance describes the system we set up to assist human society to achieve its common purpose in a sustainable manner — that is, with equity and justice
Growing interdependence requires that our laws, our social norms and values, our mechanisms for framing human behavior be examined, debated, understood and operated together as coherently as possible. This is what would provide the basis for effective sustainable development in its economic, social and environmental dimensions [This is “harmonization” ~ gc]
…..governance needs to provide leadership, the incarnation of vision, of political energy, of drive.
It also needs to provide legitimacy, which is essential to ensure ownership over decisions which lead to change — ownership to prevent the built-in bias towards resistance to modifying the status quo. [This is where CAGW and Environmentalism come in, to foster ownership ~ gc]
A legitimate governance system must also ensure efficiency…
Finally, a governance system must be coherent. Compromises would need to be found over objectives which often may contradict one another…
…..legitimacy depends on the closeness of the relationship between the individual and the decision-making process, the challenge of global governance is distance. The other legitimacy challenges are the so-called democratic deficit and accountability deficit, which arise when there are no means for individuals to challenge international decision-making.
…the specific challenge of legitimacy in global governance is to deal with the perceived too-distant, non-accountable and non-directly challengeable decision-making at the international level…… [enter NGOs stage left… ~ gc]
[Pascal Lamy’s Money Quote ~ gc]
I realize that, in these troubled times for the European Union, it is no easy matter to present it as a new paradigm of global governance. And yet, the European construction is the most ambitious experiment to date in supranational governance. It is the story of a desired, defined and organized interdependence between its member states.
What marks the essence of the European governance paradigm is the coming together of a political will, a goal to be attained as well as an institutional set-up. It is the combination of these three elements — and not the specific method of governance used. Not that we should underestimate the technological leap forward in the building of Europe.….

Most of us are familiar with Maurice Strong and “Sscientists” like Phil Jones and Mike Mann but I think few outside of Europe have paid attention to Pascal Lamy another mover and shaker on the global governance scene. So who is Pascal Lamy and what are his tie-ins?

Pascal Lamy launches new LSE programme [and there is his tie-in to the Fabians and the London School of Economics. ~ gc]
EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, a key player in the globalisation and regulation of world trade, will speak at the London School of Economics and Political Science on Thursday 1 February at the launch of LSE’s new Global Dimensions programme.
Commissioner Lamy’s talk will be on Harnessing globalisation: do we need cosmopolitics?….

A Conversation with WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy
By Adrienne Bryan and Esther Yu
Director-General Pascal Lamy holds degrees from the Paris-based Ecole des Hautes Études
Commerciales (HEC), from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (IEP) and from the Ecole Nationale
d’Administration (ENA). He began his career in the French civil service at the Inspection Générale des finances and at the Treasury. He then became an advisor to the Finance Minister Jacques Delors, and subsequently to Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy. In Brussels from 1985 to 1994, Pascal Lamy was Chief of Staff for the President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, and his representative as Sherpa in the G7. In November 1994, he joined the team in charge of rescuing Credit Lyonnais, and later became CEO of the bank until its privatization in 1999. Between 1999 and 2004, Pascal Lamy was Commissioner for Trade at the European Commission under Romano Prodi. After his tenure in Brussels, Pascal Lamy spent a short sabbatical period as President of “Notre Europe”, a think tank working on European integration, as associate Professor at the l’Institut d’études politiques in Paris and as advisor to Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (President of the European Socialist Party). [There is Lamy’s tie-in to the Bankers and the ~ cg]
Q: From your perspective, how is sovereignty conceived of differently in the United States than in Europe?
This is something for each nation to decide, what I have found is that sovereignty means more for big countries than for small countries. Small countries have a clearer sense of the need to band together to secure economy, political and military security. These differences exist within Europe as well, as the French, British, German, and Italian systems are all different. For this reason, it is difficult to compare a European and American vision of democracy. There is one difference which I would say is fundamental, and that is the fact that European countries by choice and also by necessity have decided to surrender a bit of their sovereignty so that they can make policy collectively through the European Union. Because of its size and power, this is something which the US has never really considered. The nation-state is still very strong in some European countries, but there is still the commitment to a united Europe. The EU has worked hard to strengthen its democratic foundations, largely by giving greater weight and authority to the European Parliament, each of whose members are directly elected by local constituents….. [Reading between the lines, this is the reason the USA must be weakened militarily and economically while China is strengthened ~ gc]
Q: Why does the move towards a global democracy need to be a priority?
We live in an age when the problems we face are increasingly global in nature and the solutions will have to be global as well. That means all countries must realize sooner or later that they need to work together and accept an erosion of individual sovereignty because it will not work its if some participate and others do not. This has been clear for more than 60 years in the area of multilateral trade. This has also become clear in the area of environment, in which fighting climate change will not work unless undertaken by all nations, according to their responsibilities. Finally, this need has recently become acute in the area of financial regulation.
If we are to address the challenges of today’s world, many of which have a global dimension, we need to find multilateral solutions in which all nations participate to some degree. Unless governments feel a degree of ownership in the proposed solution, there will be little incentive to implement whatever that solution may be…. Moving towards a global democracy raises new challenges in terms of both efficiency (the international system is heavy and opaque) and legitimacy (citizen representation has to move beyond the frame of the nation-state)…. [There are the reasons for the UN’s first Earth Summit in 1972 and the financial crisis of today ~ cg]

TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE WITH EUROPEAN UNION TRADE COMMISSIONER PASCAL LAMY – European Commission Delegation Washington, DC, November 4, 2003
Is Europe’s left ready to govern?: If a new social democratic era is to be ushered in, the left must find new answers and strategies – or this chance will be wasted
And anyone who thinks this “CHANCE” was not manufactured has been living in a closet with the door closed.

I want membership of the Party of European Socialists
…. I want the Labour Party to enable my membership to include individual membership of the Party of European Socialists (PES)
Can you think of a better way of enabling better understanding of, involvement in and commitment to Britain’s membership of the European Union?
I proposed this at the Fabian Conference morning session on Saturday on European Britain. I don’t claim authorship of this idea. John Palmer, former European Editor of the Guardian and latterly policy director of the European Policy Centre wrote about….

There is the European Socialist Party and Fabian Society tie-in.
If you do not think this effects the USA here is Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke’s speech at the London School of Economics: The Crisis and the Policy Response
(A Transcript, Press Cuttings, Podcast and Video, available at LSE – http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2008/20081203t1159z001.aspx )

CONCLUSION
….Finally, a clear lesson of the recent period is that the world is too interconnected for nations to go it alone in their economic, financial, and regulatory policies. International cooperation is thus essential if we are to address the crisis successfully and provide the basis for a healthy, sustained recovery.

Sounds like Lamy doesn’t he?

‘Sustainable Justice’
It was only a matter of time before they came up w/that vile & disgusting Orwellian phrase.

quidsapio says:
June 19, 2012 at 2:45 am
Sorry, I can’t agree that a certain amount of wealth redistribution would be a bad thing – though I don’t think there’s much danger of it actually happening. I think the idea Obama is interested in spreading the riches around is laughable. He serves the interest of the tiny minority of super-rich as most world leaders do and always have done.He’s just mouthing platitudes and making promises he has no intention of keeping – which is his hallmark in everything.
But what’s wrong with universal health care? I’ve lived in the US and the UK and I know which one I’d prefer to get sick in. It doesn’t have to mean a “nanny state” and when people talk like that they’re being as irrational as any Warmist.

You obviously have not ‘been sick in’ the UK recently. see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2161292/NHS-care-Lack-compassion-overworked-staff-costing-patients-lives.html

Move within the circles for which film and gallery openings and ballet after- parties and such are de rigueur. Hang out in trendy places where the hip and the cool and the elite gather to discuss the things they discuss and impress each other with all of the latest buzzwords.
Ask the simplest of questions… “what does sustainability mean?” … “so, mandatory means- sending men with guns?”… persist as they mumble nonsense.
Watch their faces redden
Become the target of vitriolic tirades, even assaults, from those who view themselves as oh, so above it all.
Get yourself dis- invited from such gatherings and even people’s homes- told never to return.
The Red Queen will have her heads.

LazyTeenager,
“Yep!
So which masters are Paul and Duggan beholden to? And then we can ask the question whether those masters “will ever display wisdom detached from ardent ideology”
Do you actually have a point to make, or are you just having a troll?

quidsapio says:
June 19, 2012 at 2:45 am
“But what’s wrong with universal health care?”
The problem is always cost control. In order to control costs certain protocols have to be instituted. These protocols are devised, set and administered by non medical people. You end up having someone other than you and your doctor making decisions of what medical procedures can be used to take care of the issue and when they are applicable.

It is, in short, the total nanny state.

Take a short trip to a total nanny state, North Korea. They control everything you do, everything you eat, and everything you think because if you dare think differently, you and your parents and your children and your children’s children will be sent to a special camp. Some of the ones we know of from satellite photos, camp defectors, and survivors are Camp 14, Camp 15, Camp 18, and Camp 22. In the nanny state, the religion is the state. The God is not a deity but the dear leader. The guards in the special camps treat the residents of the special camps without mercy because if they don’t, then they and their family to the third generation will be a resident in the camp too. The only ones who live well are the privileged few.
The only way to control the lives of humans to the degree they want is by inhumane treatment. And you can bet your last dollar that the special ones, like Al Gore, won’t have to make sacrifices. The people who plan these utopias always plan how they want others to live, not how they want themselves to live. And so, because by design the creators of utopia are insulated from the troubles of the real life people live, life is really a dystopia.
Also, please provide references for these quotes.

Green activists at Rio are trying to increase the already exorbitant taxes on our fossil fuels by starting an #endfossilfuelsubsidies “Twitterstorm”
http://endfossilfuelsubsidies.org/twitterstorm/
There are, of course no subsidies on fossil fuels in most countries. Greens use “subsidy” as a misnomer for any tax relief granted to business.
Since this is the very week that the “father” of the environmental movement James Lovelock described most green activism as “meaningless green drivel”.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161379/This-meaningless-green-drivel-environment-guru-Scientists-U-turn-doomsday-claim.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
If you’re active on twitter, and come across #endfossilfuelsubsidies or any other irritating green nonsense – why not reply #meaninglessgreendrivel
Let’s have a sceptical “Twitterstorm”

Peter Miller
You hit the nail on the head, this is just failed communism with a new lamb skin wrapped around the wolf. Exactly the ism that our Julia Gillard stood for in her university years. Makes you wonder where we are being dragged, the ideal of communism with some fancy icing trimmed with progressive frosting.
Seems that as the rediculous CAGW lazy teenager world of deception disguised as science, get laid to rest, the real agenda emerges, The good thing for Lazy teenagers is that under that system they “think” they will get it all without raising a finger or the slightest sweat to be the rulers of the future.
Ask the millions of displaced persons and refugee’s who fled that sort of regime, if we should allow that ilk control our lives. LT would be put out to labour camp, quick smart, while the new ruling class takes/steals more of the cake, and the crumbs are offered with the sweepings from their table, in the dirt and dust of history.

When you think about it, another word for “sustainability” is “repression”.

Spread the wealth around? By what means? In the end, the means always involve coercion and compulsion. Sometimes, it involves bloodshed, terror and the loss of life, like in Cambodia. It also destroys the ability the economy to function.
The economist Ludwig von Mises showed in 1920 [1,2] that since a socialist economy destroys price information via government intrusion, the myriad of participants in the economy are unable to make a fully rational calculation about true profit and loss. Any economic activity that operates at a loss cannot be “sustainable”, a concept the left loves to scold us about, yet cannot really grasp.
Taking another approach, the Nobel economist F.A. Hayek showed that a national economy had such an immense myriad of dynamic economic relationships that no single committee or bureaurcracy, no matter how smart or how well staffed, could possibly know enough to direct prices or production levels. His Nobel Lecture [3] was entitled The Pretence of Knowledge. Hayek had previously used this idea as the basis for a very thorough article [4] on the subject, “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”
When these two different withering critiques of socialism are combined, it is easy to see that not only is it dangrously foolish to think that economic decisions can successfully be made by government, but that competing bureaucracies will invariably react to the consequences of intrusions in the marketplace by each other. It would be like trying to control the height of waves on a lake by measuring them from the back of a boat circling in its own wake.
[1] Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth by Ludwig von Mises
http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf
[2] Why a Socialist Economy is “Impossible” by Joseph T. Salerno
http://mises.org/econcalc/POST.asp
[3] The Pretense of Knowledge http://mises.org/daily/3229
[4] “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review, XXXV, No. 4; September, 1945, pp. 519–30.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=92

And when the Earth decides to again return to snowball status, whose wealth do they then redistribute?

I am glad CFACT is in Rio but it needs to also have its eyes on the Belmont Forum and the International Biosphere-Geosphere Programme and the entire Future Earth Alliance apparatus planning to go operational in 2013. With ICLEI at the local levels and these initiatives using OPM, the entire UN apparatus plus the World Bank and OECD are planning on a green economy of degrowth and no fossil fuels regardless of what voters want.
And it’s all out of our site for the most part.
Here’s a story I wrote on how the Un’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development is also driving this nightmare of power and unaccountable control over our innermost possessions.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-facts-wont-cooperate-there-is-always-pedagogy/

How do you reconcile the Declaration of Independence preamble “that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – that to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” and handicapping children who aren’t born into wealth and priviledge with poor quality education and non-existent health care? I suppose the hoi polloi can pursue happiness – as long as their chance of success is negligible.
The other thing our country was founded upon was an aversion to aristocracy. Encouraging insurmountable differences in the starting points of our nation’s children will only increase the political divisions – until we again reach a point where the wealthy and priviledged are again an aristocracy.

I have just changed my homepage from CNN news to Fox news. Why? CNN just announced the following, probably because of the summit happening in Rio. What idiots. My guess is that already planned for and budgeted disaster drills will continue, and sea wall work will go on as scheduled, just under a new name. And hopefully with coinage donated from redistributed wealth programs. CO2 is such a gravy train!
“CNN has teamed up with The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and the Carbon Disclosure Project to show the risks climate change poses to five major global cities and the steps they are taking to protect them for future generations. “

The Medium is the Message: Climatists use of the same tactics they believed were working for them in the past, back in the 20th century; but, these same tactics now mark them as purveyors of half-truths and superstition in the 21st century (at least among the thinking class who value reason and logic over feelings) and now they must think of new ways to keep the hoax alive.
http://evilincandescentbulb.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/skepticism-of-climatism-focuses-on-the-lefts-motives/

Bill Tuttle says:
June 19, 2012 at 1:11 am
The 18-member Group includes no Americans – but condemns the US and other governments for their dedication to economic growth, rather than wealth redistribution, and demands that governments play a key role in promoting “sustainability” and welfare.
Translation for the politically-impaired: “Creating wealth is bad. Redistributing wealth is good.”
As long as it’s not their wealth. They have no interest in producing their own wealth. They only want someone else’s they can take. Caring bunch, eh?

ROM says:
June 19, 2012 at 4:37 am
It’s good to see people realizing the scam of green economics. The authorities claim they must take over and control vast sectors of the economy to save us. Local people instinctively know they survive when they control their own land and can grow their own food, thus maintaining their own local economy.
The funny part is calling it “green capitalism”. Unfortunately, they don’t understand free market capitalism is freedom. Freedom to purchase what products you want. Freedom to make goods and provide services. Let the best prosper. Let everyone make their own decisions about what is best for them. There is no central planning authority that could possibly take into consideration all of the factors that matter to every individual.
Socialism is the lie that everyone owns everything, when in fact everyone is equally poor (except for a small elite at the top), and getting poorer. Green is just a new shade of red. Power in government is the problem. Power in the hands of the people should be stronger than government. In fact it is, but people have to realize it. WUWT helps energize people and gives them the information they need to recognize the Judas goats and avoid the slaughterhouse.

Feeding the poor isn’t their intention, and the consequences of their actions are not unintended.

I seemed to have flubbed my attempt to embed links, so here are the correct links
Pascal Lamy launches new LSE programme: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2001/pascal_lamy.aspx
A Conversation with WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy: http://www.stanford.edu/group/sjir/pdf/Special_Section_Lamy.pdf

I think they called it ‘Agenda 21’ so that anyone writing about it would be deemed to be a tin-foil conspiracy nut case (Area 51). The conspiracy of Agenda 21, year right, here try this on, sleeves are a bit long but we can fix that….
It needs a different name like: The Rio Accord for Prosperity Equalization (RAPE).

My apology for typo’s and mixed tense (to…do, is…are)

“They insist that all governments provide universal access to public health care, guaranteed state allowances for every child, guaranteed state support for the unemployed and underemployed, and basic universal pensions and universal social security.”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The problem with Britain’s welfare state, which includes all of the benefits in the above quote (they forgot education) is affordability and abuse as reflected in this article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2109526/Why-Britains-fallen-love-welfare-state.html
“Britain now spends 7.2 per cent of GDP (£110 billion, excluding free health care and education), on it’s welfare system, and the costs of supporting the, supposedly, needy continue to rise. As the Whitehall empire grows, drowning the noble intentions of welfare in red tape, so too do the number who choose to abuse the system.
For years the welfare state was one of the glories of Britain’s democratic landscape, a monument to the generosity and decency of human nature, offering a hand up to those unlucky enough to be born at the bottom. The current system has become bureaucratic, sclerotic and ineffective, trapping thousands of people in a cycle of dependency.
Sir William Beverage, who founded the welfare system, was a man of personal austerity, who rose every morning at dawn, took an ice-cold bath and worked for two hours before breakfast, he hated the thought people might ‘settle down’ to a life on benefits.
Beveridge’s mission was to eradicate the grinding poverty of the Hungry Thirties, when three out of four people in some industrial towns were out of work, when thousands of children suffered from disease and malnutrition, and when rickets, dental decay and anaemia were widespread in inner cities.And to his credit, Beveridge’s system was an overwhelming success.
Yet like so many top-down initiatives, the welfare state gradually became a gigantic exercise in Whitehall empire-building.
Not surprisingly, waste and fraud are widespread. A few years ago, even the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) itself admitted that the level of fraud in the jobseeker’s allowance was almost 10 per cent. Year after year, as the former chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh, remarked, ‘the story has been the same: the DWP loses enormous sums of money to fraud and error . . . Year after year billions of pounds are going into the pockets of people who are not entitled to them.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2109526/Why-Britains-fallen-love-welfare-state.html#ixzz1yFhuLTY8

@ Frank K. says:
June 19, 2012 at 7:51 am
Pamela Gray says:
June 19, 2012 at 6:55 am
“CNN has teamed up with The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and the Carbon Disclosure Project to show the risks climate change poses to five major global cities and the steps they are taking to protect them for future generations. ”
I wish I could say I really cared about CNN and their involvement with “climate issues” – but alas they are irrelevant to me and my life, and simply aren’t worth my time anymore. However, this may help increase their viewership from 5 to maybe 7 or 8 people…
This is the group (C40) that is chaired by none other than estimable Mayor Bloomberg of NYC. The same Mayor who has recently declared war on large soda’s, popcorn and milkshakes, among other things. What an asinine idiota.

I am at a loss to explain the silence on the Wall Street Journal in regards to Rio+20.
Even today, in the The Decline of Democracy by Bret Stephens, Rio isn’t mentioned once.
Some possible explanations:
1. WSJ is waiting for the ink to dry before the first of many salvo.
1a. WSJ is waiting the the ink to dry on the US Signatures before the first of many salvos.
2. Rio+20 is really quite harmless and the CFACT guys are making it seem much worse than it really is to drum up hits.
3. WSJ editors figure that the financial tax, like all government programs, will still make Wall Street a fortune in taking their cut.
4. WSJ is inexplicably asleep at the switch, though the UN Internet Power Grab a few days ago belies that.
5. WSJ Editorial Board has been infiltrated by Agenda21 supporters.
I hope it is #1 or 1a.

“When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
This is a fallacy perpetuated by the short-sighted petty tyrants who want to control everybody else, and thus seek to buy their allegiances with other people’s money.
The fact is that redistribution of assets *inevitably* takes them away from those who manage them well (thereby accumulating wealth) and hands these assets out to people who do not manage them well (thereby squandering wealth).
When the receivers outnumber the providers, politicians get re-elected, but providers get discouraged, and the receivers get greedier.

I spent the last two weeks in Rio on business. From the first week to the second week, the price of hotels doubled, due to the deluge of delegates for this circus. After the people arrived in Rio for the conference, my hotel was crawling with delegates, many of whom were young people proudly wearing shirts proclaiming their participation in the “youth sustainability” events. It made me sick to think that they were there because of government funding. These UN sponsored events are nothing but shameless and grotesque wastes of money.

quidsapio says: But what’s wrong with universal health care?

Well, nothing unless you happen to be a doctor or other health care professional suddenly indentured against your will to provide that care for whatever some politician decides it is worth rather than what every living breathing individual decides it is worth to them personally. How about “universal car care” or “universal food service” or “universal education”? Whenever you take capitalism out of the equation – surplus and quality are the first to leave the scene.
Excepting slavery, without competition there is no incentive for quality. Without capitalism there is no incentive to create a surplus or innovate to reduce costs. (And surplus is the ONLY true source of government revenue.)

Soooooooo…The Question:
“Can you define sustainability? ICLEI can’t…”

H/T CFACT

Curiousgeorge says:
June 19, 2012 at 8:24 am
“This is the group (C40) that is chaired by none other than estimable Mayor Bloomberg of NYC. The same Mayor who has recently declared war on large soda’s, popcorn and milkshakes, among other things. What an asinine idiota.”
Ah yes – big gulp soda from 7-11, BAD – “tall” Starbucks mocha latte with whipped cream, GOOD. /facepalm.
It is both sad and comical to see climate “science” and the “green” movement going the way of the #Occupy movement…

The US is less economically mobile than nearly all European countries. It matters more who your parents are here than it does over there.

Pure twaddle and claptrap, two words which could be used to describe nearly your entire post. Upward mobility is not created by the government. Upward mobility is created by freedom and individual effort.
Vouchers are a better answer than charter schools.

On vouchers, any legislation needs to deal with the unconstrained dictatorship that modern-day accreditation has become. Or the public schools stay poisoned and you open the voucher receiving private schools to the accreditors gutting academics.
Pamela-I am not sure who you are talking to but someone wanting to spread communism via the schools emphasizes the socialist theory of the mind, not who owns what a redistribution. The socialist theory of the mind emphasizes emotion and rejects any distinction between feelings and reason. Secondly, it puts a premium on physical activity like projects and otherwise creating artefacts like posters or videos. It rejects the idea that there is any such thing as rational thought or an ability to construct a private mental world. That’s why it also rejects teaching reading beyond a basic level of functionality in daily life.
On environmentalism, listen to that CFACT video. The articulate gentleman describing “systemic thinking” is how environmentalism comes in and becomes a permanent component of an individual’s filtering mindset. Probably not even a conscious quality either.

more soylent green! says:
June 19, 2012 at 9:44 am
Pure twaddle and claptrap, two words which could be used to describe nearly your entire post. Upward mobility is not created by the government. Upward mobility is created by freedom and individual effort.

I was as surprised to hear that the US is not as economically mobile as you appear to be. Please take a moment (several actually) to read The Economist Special Report on Meritocracy in America. The Economist is a staunch right-wing free enterprise journal. It is especially ironic that many of the efforts to make America more mobile (such as federal funding for advanced education) are now factors in it becoming even more rigid.

@ Curiousgeorge says: . . . . . . Grow up???? . . . .
Question is . . . . am I right???? . . . Just what do you think “IF” is for? IF not for making an specific point!

Dave Dodd says:
June 19, 2012 at 6:28 am
And when the Earth decides to again return to snowball status, whose wealth do they then redistribute?
_________________________________
If you look at the United Nations Biodiversity Treaty/ Wildlands Map Humans will be allowed in green areas. Map from http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/articles2/wildlands_project_and_un_convent.htm
UN Biodiversity Treaty and The Wildlands Project; How the Convention on Biodiversity was defeated. (for now) http://nwri.org/the-wildlands-project/un-biodiversity-treaty-and-the-wildlands-project/
Listing of various other related US laws and bills: http://www.klamathbucketbrigade.org/YNTKwildlandsproject_table.htm
But as usual it is being implemented piece meal instead. Rosa Koire goes into how it is now being implemented at her site Democrats against Agenda 21 (her video is worth watching because she gives indepth info)
Here are some of the “Wildlands Websites”
http://www.oaec.org/wildlands-biodiversity
http://rewilding.org/rewildit/
So what does all that have to do with “snowball status, whose wealth do they then redistribute?”
It has to do with making sure much of mankind is immobile and without the resources to survive a colder earth. “Culling the “Human Herd” has been a common goal of the elite for years, from Stalin to Hitler to Pol Pot and the current North Korea and China. You can see the newest Eugenics/Genocide push has already started in the UK where they are getting rid of the “Useless Eaters” The USA thats to the EPA is next.

More than one in five British households suffers fuel poverty
….published research strongly suggesting that some 6.3 million British households pay 10 percent or more of their household income towards their energy bills. It means that in one of the biggest economies of the world, an astonishing quarter of all households find it difficult to heat their homes….
he UK has some of the highest poverty and child poverty figures among developed nations. Last winter was exceptionally cold and many had to spend upwards of 30-40 percent of their income on fuel.
The government is in the process of cutting schemes to support the elderly, phasing out energy assistance for poor households via the Warm Front scheme and reducing winter fuel payments by up to £100. This will lead to the deaths of thousands more elderly people. In 2009/10, nine elderly people died every hour from cold-related illnesses. In just a four-month period, 25,400 elderly people died in England and Wales, plus 2,760 in Scotland. The UK has the highest winter death rate in northern Europe; worse than much colder countries such as Finland and Sweden.

Freezing the old to death is one way of getting rid of all those Baby boomers and older that are a drain on government wealfare and heathcare systems and no longer contribute to “Society” aka the wallets of the regulating class.

Smokey says:
June 19, 2012 at 11:24 am

When John Micklethwait was appointed to run the Economist, it started getting off course…

You will be relieved the article was published in 2004, two years prior to Micklethwait becoming editor-in-chief. And the article doesn’t use the word climate once.

SocialBlunder says:
June 19, 2012 at 11:06 am
… The Economist is a staunch right-wing free enterprise journal.

No, it’s not. On social issues, it’s very left-leaning. Its editorial policy is self-described liberal.
Furthermore, the article you linked to relies heavily upon the EPI, which is a progressive think tank with ties to organized labor and is a supporter of OWS.
In all fairness, to a rabid Marxist or anarchist far-left progressive, The Economist may appear to be right-wing in comparison.

and then I run across . . . . Algorithmic trading in energy markets
http://www.risk.net/energy-risk/feature/2136141/algorithmic-trading-energy-markets
US House panel sticks with CFTC funding cut
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/19/usa-cftc-funding-idUSL1E8HJDPY20120619
while doing research on:
the fact that “””CFTC said its chief economist, Andrei Kirilenko would leave … analyses of algorithmic trading and computer-driven high frequency trading.””” to go to MIT.
Bottom line is that with the advent of computers, spread sheets and algorithms . . . these guys can game the system and have for many many generations . . . . the only way to fix this is to have a tax system that considers every single way transactions are set up to maximize profits which rob the productive capacity of this country . . .
I wouldn’t criticize this if if our country still had a very progressive profit tax . . . . that would automatically reign in the “greed” factor and “Huck Finn” strategies that have been around for so long . . . .
It is this same very progressive profit tax that reigned in motivations for all kinds orf wars (including economic) as well as other conquests . . .and It has funded many peaceful improvements in societies . . . like road, bridges, and crop insurance!
Why is that so many “capitalists” forget that . . . . all wealth comes from Land, Labor, and Capital . . . . and all “Capital” came from Land and Labor first . . . .
Profit . . . is not magic & it is measured . . . Huck Finn knew this better than Tom Sawyer who painted the fence . . .
And the most primary property each person has is his own labor . . . regardless of how that labor manifests itself.
So I guess if that fall into someone’s definitioin of socialist or communist . . . Oh well . . . Damn it!

@Pollyanna says:
I find your writing style to be obtuse…and difficult to read….
Regardless, you have a good grasp of redistributionist Marxist rhetoric and a typically poor grasp of basic economics and human behavior.
When a business pays taxes, that money comes from the owners or the customers. This reduces money available in the private sector. Everything the public sector does comes from money taken from individuals and it deprives them of making choices on how to spend it.
In other words, you have it bassackwards. High taxes reduce economic output, which means fewer jobs and lower wages. It also means less taxes collected (because overall economic activity is reduced).
And of course, high taxes mean more of a person’s labor (their property) gets taken from them.
Lack of profits never kept Communist nations from making war.

It’s “Animal Farm: A Fairy Story” all over again.

To clarify what in wiki its’ “””Taken literally, the widow’s donation of one mite could have been by obligation, because she could not have given any less. Following this reasoning, some interpreters suggest that Jesus sits down in judgment “opposite” (over against, in opposition to) the treasury; the lesson drawn emphasizes that, while people are impressed with the large sums that are put in, they did not notice that the Temple took half of what the “poor widow” had to live on.”””

I’d like to see a sustainable stock market where I can play but someone would probably want to tear it down.

“the massive investments needed to shift to a totally renewable energy and resource-based economy will require “massive de-growth (shrinkage) of products, sectors and activities that do not pass the sustainability test” –”
Sustainability is impossible in all cases. The fact is that nothing is sustainable as the world in every way is constantly changing. Sustainability is the new manmade global warming, another political myth. Imagine bureaucrats trying to manage, by regulations, of course, a sustainable economy—try balancing 10 squirming kids on the tip of your finger—yep, that not gonna happen, AT ALL.
Man loves status quo. The first time we count foxes per acre, fine. But, if the number changes when we count them next, we get upset. Actually, only those who do not know biology and predator/prey dynamics get upset.
Sustainability is the status quo tendency on steroids and applied by the UN!
Sea gulls are a constant along the sea coast. In the 1970s, a bird flu wiped out 75% of the population. It was not terribly obvious as you could still attract a gull fairly quickly by throwing food in the water, just not as many. But, the chicks born in the next several years had plenty of food and grew to be like Baby Hueys, more than twice the size of their parents. These immature gulls were clumsy bullies and blundered about, driving the adults away. Several years later, these same gulls were mature and able to get more food due to their size and even from the now smaller immature gulls, who could not compete with these giants. It took close to 20 years for the effects of this one disease event to level off and, of course, another could occur at any time, if not already. Imagine how meaningless and probably damaging regulations to manage the population would have been with the 20 years of changes that occurred naturally. There is no way that bureaucrats would wait 20 years before they start to meddle and screw things up even worse.
Most people do not know that one of the main factors that collapsed the USSR was the fact that they were trying to manage an economy by bureaucratically fixing prices. It became entirely impossible to adjust over 36,000,000 prices every day and not make mistakes that caused amazing damage, surpluses, shortages. The “market” was so unstable that factories tended to have huge raw materials and parts inventory as they did not know when the next order would arrive. This represents huge value sitting around doing nothing.
The UN wants to manage the world. Be scared, very scared.

Harold Pierce Jr says:
June 19, 2012 at 3:07 am
Then we can kick the leeches out of NYC and send them packing to Europe.
You are a great fan of cruel and unusual punishments, are not you?
Send them to Harare instead. Climate is perfect, government suits them, financial system is post-industrial, overconsumption unknown and they can’t possibly be so racists as to reject the opportunity.

@Pollyanna….
Seriously…. What’s with all…. The … Are you trying to parody something?
It’s just … A bunch… Of thought fragments strung together… Try writing in complete sentences…. If you…. Want people to understand you or take you… Seriously.

Smokey, you always have the nicest graphs.
By the way the last chart was the number of people FILING income tax returns. Currently the labor force is at a 30-year low. Only 63.7%.of the population is working. In addition a lot of small business people are not turning a profit right now and although they may be filing they are not actually paying tax. (Just heard that on the radio) so chances are less than 50% of the population is paying tax. The labor force is defined as 16 to 65 years of age.
In January of this year

…it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation……

Here are some more graphs for you
Persons not in the Labor Force ~ 12/31/2007 to 12/31/2011
Labor Force Participation Rate

Pollyanna says: @ June 19, 2012 at 1:00 pm
….“”progressive income taxation relates to the ability to pay and that relates to accumulated net wealth,…..
_____________________________
Yeah, people would be horrified if they ever realized just how much tax they pay without ever filing a state or federal tax return. I calculated I paid about 65% and that was just the sales tax, gasoline tax, property tax…. that I could calculate.
The other lie is that the progressive tax taxes the rich. The rich ALREADY have their wealth nicely tucked away. Progressive tax taxes WAGES and therefore only the lower and middle classes and the flunkies of the rich.

I really just wanted to read this, but I guess I have to hop in for a second.
Dear quidsapio, let me tell you a story. A few years back my mother finally decided to get surgery on the varices on her left left. She’s past 60 and that one was particular nasty. Given her age and background it was easy to argue that this one varix was a risk factor. So first she asked at the local hospital which is under nationalized health care. They told her they had a waiting list of one year. My parents have private insurance, so my mother asked in the roughly 60 miles away private hospital. They basically told her “when do you want your surgery?” She went private, had it removed and all is fine.
A few years ago I had my eyes lasered. I was short-sighted, massively so. Nationalized health insurance wouldn’t pay anything, I paid it all myself. It was life-changing. My personal living quality went up ten fold easily. Three years ago I had an accident during which one of my teeth got damaged. I had it treated under my nationalized health insurance at the local nationalized clinic. That lasted for year, then what was left of the tooth simply broke off and the filling fell out. It just fell out, without any forces working on it. (I also had a look and found out that they did the root treatment completely wrong.) I went to a specialist for implants, he had a look at it and removed the tooth. Now I have an implant instead. I had to pay for that implant because the national health insurance here doesn’t pay for it. I could have gotten something else, which they would have paid for, but that thing would never have been of high quality.
If you’re wondering, this happened in Austria. We have a nationalized healthcare, which is absolutely bankrupt, similar to the NHS in the UK. It’s true that they pay for replacements and such, always have. But none of this stuff is top of the line. You get what works and is cheap, not what is best for you. You’re a number to the bureaucrats. They’re only interested in you when they collect the taxes.

What Pollyanna will not admit is that IF we simply seized the entire assets of everyone making a billion $ per year that alone would NOT come even close to paying for just ONE year of federal expenditure. So DO IT Pollyanna and then tell us where the money is going to come from the next year?
“Feed your Family on Ten Billion Dollars per day”

Ferd, the Federal Reserve is the banks bank. We aren’t borrowing money from the Federal Reserve. The Treasury issues bonds, not the Fed. The Fed buys bonds.
The Fed has a lot of issues, such as no accountability, and possibly doing things outside their charter. But nothing you said is even close to true.

Pollyana: It’s a simple question. There is no depends about it. What part of your income do I deserve? How much of the fruits of your labor do you own, and how much are mine?

more soylent green! says:
June 20, 2012 at 6:38 am
What fair share of your income, wealth, labor and other property am I entitled to, Pollyanna? How much of what you own do I deserve?
Just curious….
more soylent green! says:
June 20, 2012 at 11:21 am
Pollyana: It’s a simple question. There is no depends about it. What part of your income do I deserve? How much of the fruits of your labor do you own, and how much are mine?

ANSWER TO BOTH OF THE ABOVE: I’m not entitled to any of your property, income, wealth or labor. The fruits of your labor belong to you. I don’t deserve any of it, any you aren’t entitled or deserving of anyone else’s, get it?

@Allen MacRae
From your quoted text: “Importantly, an increasing number of scientists are affirming the new findings which demonstrate it’s not possible for CO2 – or any so-called “greenhouse” gas – to “trap” energy in Earth’s atmosphere – a frequently cited claim of global warming alarmists. Critics of the GHE say the latest findings comport with satellite data and indicate that Earth emits as much infrared heat as it receives from the sun and thereby proves there is no magical atmospheric effect in play making our planet warmer than it would otherwise be. Despite these groundbreaking new findings dozens of government agencies are avoiding addressing them.”
I am given to understand that the ‘heat signature’ in the troposphere at 8-16 km altitude that is supposed to be the hallmark effect of CO2 trapping heat in the tropics is completely absent. I am not saying this based on the excellent paper on the subject by Monckton, but on the coming AR5 which will avoid the topic completely. Instead of producing for the first time the evidence-based science (known as ‘measurements’) that shows unequivocally that the heat signature of CO2’s ‘greenhouse effect’ is present, they will, rather, not show the science that demonstrates clearly the hot spot simply does not exist and apparently never did. They will concentrate their comments on the other parts of the troposphere where nothing is supposed to be happening and show that, well… nothing is happening.
I must say I am really disappointed in the IPCC which, following ClimateGate, should have pulled up their socks and taken out some of the most obvious fraud and weasel wording. If something as essential to the CAGW business as that ‘heat being captured’ is absent, how can any of the rest of the report by viewed as meaningful? If there is no discernible ‘greenhouse effect’ with its ‘back radiation’ then a large error in judgement has been made about the dangers posed by elevated CO2 concentrations. A weighty tome that contains absolutely fundamental errors and omits the most revealing data has no value save as a door stop and later, a paper supply for the 2-holer.

Smokey says: @ June 21, 2012 at 4:08 pm
….I am not rich. But I know that no poor person creates jobs. And jobs are what we desperately need to get the economy up and running again. You are shooting yourself in the foot by hating those who earn more than you do. You’re like Obama, when he was asked why he didn’t lower tax rates since lower tax rates always result in more government revenues. His answer: it’s a matter of ‘fairness’. You would rather have what you perceive to be ‘fair’ than to have a growing economy, high employment, and everyone getting a bigger piece of the pie. I cannot imagine a more selfish attitude.
________________________________________
You missed the corollary. More Taxes=> More Bureaucrats => More RED TAPE => LESS business => LESS jobs.
Ridiculous bureaucracy is killing the American Dream
Also Pollyanna still hasn’t figured out the difference between the working stiffs (wage earners) who pay taxes and the idle Rich who OWN the corporations and have all sorts of ways to dodge taxes.