Author: stephenhinton

Tell politicians national economies are not like handbags.

handbagAn article newly published in the New Statesman points out something that is clear to economists: a national economy is not the same as a household economy. Politicians of all persuasions seem to be getting that badly wrong.

Politicians can cause problems by inferring that the nation must pay its debts like any well-run household because it just doesn’t work like that. Nations, unlike households, have a money-printing machine in the basement.

The article cites and incident of British Prime Minister David Cameron trying to use the “handbag” routine:

In 2011, Cameron had to hastily rewrite a speech stating that “the only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit card and store card bills” after economists pointed out that this would massively exacerbate a recession fuelled by lack of demand.

The idea that a nation’s books must balance is counter-intuitive. Yet when it comes to the environmental books, the need to have a healthy flow of nutrients in the economy without degrading land and depleting resources, this seems to be accepted as some kind of necessary evil.

It is as if the Prime Minister want the money system to have its books balanced whilst the environment (and poverty) is a tool to achieve that .

The opposite is the ideal: balancing the environmental and social books, and the money system is one tool to ensure that. If the money books don’t balance so what? They aren’t even meant to. You cannot say the same for nature.

(in Swedish) Man in Mission Workshop

Välkommen till en helg för Män, där vi lyssnar och inspirerar varandra utifrån frågeställningar som “Vad är min drivkraft och hur kan jag ge uttryck för den i större utsträckning? “Vilka är mina hinder och hur kan jag övervinna dem?” Helgen erbjuder inspiration och stöd att växa som man, medmänniska och ledare. Vi berör teman såsom känslor, självinsikt, integritet och riktning. Vi lyssnar till varandra samt av nedan inspiratörer. Helgen erbjuder även vila, eftertanke, musikinslag och bastu/relax för den som önskar.

Samtalsform
I våra möten utgår vi från samtalscirkeln som bygger på att alla får dela med sig av sina tankar medan övriga lyssnar. Denna är en ofta använd metod i Mundekulla både på våra konferenser, kurser, festivaler och retreater. Peter studerade Indianhistoria i USA på University of Wisconsin 1996, då han kom i kontakt med Samtalscirkeln (Talking circle) vilket han berättar mer om på plats. Sedan 10 år tillbaka arrangeras även ett årligt sommarläger baserat på denna samtalsteknik på Mundekulla “Circle Way Camp”

Till anmälan och mer info

Simulation of dividend-bearing pollutant fees launches in Berlin

SUS_phos_header

posterTSSEFIn Berlin, the 5-6 March, The Swedish Sustainable Economy Foundation, represented by Stephen Hinton, will participate in the European Sustainable Phosphorus Conference with its simulation of how dividend-bearing pollutant fees can apply to phosphorus in the circular economy.

Continue reading “Simulation of dividend-bearing pollutant fees launches in Berlin”

EFR Newsletter JANUARY 2015 Vol. 1 Issue 1

Newsletter JANUARY 2015 Vol. 3 Issue 1

Environmental Fiscal Reform Special Edition

FOR BUSINESS TO SERVE HUMANITY THE POLICY FRAMEWORK THAT SURROUNDS IT MUST BE FIT FOR PURPOSE. CURRENT PERFORMANCE SUGGESTS THAT THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM BADLY NEEDS REFORMING. IT IS DRIVING HUMAN BEHAVIOUR TO EXTRACT FROM NATURE BEYOND NATURAL LIMITS. IT IS TRANSFERRING WEALTH UPWARDS AND IN GENERAL CREATING A LUSTRELESS SOCIETY. ECONOMIC FISCAL REFORM IS THE TERM BEING USED TO DESCRIBE THE CHANGE.

Signals of blatant dissatisfaction with economic policy and the functioning of the economic system have been increasing recently. The term Environmental Fiscal Reform, which first appeared in the early 2000s, appears more frequently amid signs that the economic system itself is coming under pressure. Fiscal reform is about what governments do with the taxes they collect. The guidance they are given from mainstream economists is seriously under doubt. In the run-up to the climate talks in Paris later this year, business leaders and environmentalists alike are asking for serious reforms.

This edition of signals produced in cooperation with the Swedish Sustainable Economy Foundation. Continue reading “EFR Newsletter JANUARY 2015 Vol. 1 Issue 1”

Do mutual aid networks mean new life for local economies?

Henry George, perhaps the best-known economist from the end of the US Wild West era, pointed out that with progress comes poverty. This is ever more true today. Communities, once places that were home to people with the skills and tools to provide most of what  you needed, from midwives to undertakers, from roofers  to foundation layers, are now mere dormitory units serving in a global network of corporations. As the fortunes of corporations change, and their hunt for cheaper labour takes them offshore, it can happen that dormitory areas are thrown into poverty. Poverty, then, is the other side of the coin of progress. And most seem to accept it.

But attitudes are starting to change. People are starting to understand that living local economies can withstand the whims of corporate relocation. People are starting to see that helping each other is a better deal than finding ways of getting people to pay for literally everything in a monetarized world rapidly going nowhere.

Continue reading “Do mutual aid networks mean new life for local economies?”

Charts showing the long-term GDP-energy tie (Part 2 – A New Theory of Energy and the Economy)

One phrase from this blog struck me; Now we have practically nowhere to go. To all the people working with disaster mitigation I implore you to scenario-study what a sudden fall in oil and gas supply would mean for the society you are charged with protecting. There are ways of handling this apart from the sort of mass-death that a several million city in minus 20 degrees C might find itself.

Gail Tverberg's avatarOur Finite World

In Part 1 of this series, I talked about why cheap fuels act to create economic growth. In this post, we will look at some supporting data showing how this connection works. The data is over a very long time period–some of it going back to the Year 1 C. E.

We know that there is a close connection between energy use (and in fact oil use) and economic growth in recent years.

In this post, we will see how close the connection has been, going back to the Year 1 CE. We will also see that economies that can leverage their human energy with inexpensive supplemental energy gain an advantage over other economies. If this energy becomes high cost, we will see that countries lose their advantage over other countries, and their economic growth rate slows.

A brief summary of my view discussed in Part 1 regarding how inexpensive…

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(IN SWEDISH) Supplemental environmental fees simulation Stockholm 27 March

simulation_results
Exempel resultat efter 7 ronder

Kunskapsnivå: medel – hög
Huvudämne: miljöavgifter med återbäring som styrmedel för hållbar utveckling
Målgrupp: representanter för organisationer engagerade i miljö, klimat mm. som vill vet mer om hur styrmedel kan hjälpa till i utvecklingen. Tjänstemän som arbetar inom ekonomi och miljöpolicy.
Fördelarna med att delta: simulering är ett effektivt sätt att få inblick i olika faktorer och hyr de samverkar/motverkar. Bl.a. illustreras hur viktigt det är med – vad som kommuniceras, storleken på avgiften, tillgång till teknik, prisbilder totalt m.fler.


TID: 9:30 – 12:30
DATUM: 27 mars 2015
PLATS: Citykonditoriet konferens Adolf Fredriks Kyrkogata 10 111 37 Stockholm Continue reading “(IN SWEDISH) Supplemental environmental fees simulation Stockholm 27 March”

Oil, the economy’s central power source, is now insufficient for 3% economic growth

Great analysis by Swedish Professor on economy and oil – the long view. We ARE in changes times and that means there are opportunities to form our society how we want.

Aleklett's avatarAleklett's Energy Mix

Last Monday in January on the “Report” news programme of Sweden’s most widely watched TV channel, SVT1, they discussed future economic outlooks and they stated that the economic growth prognoses from the Sweden’s National Institute of Economic Research over the past five years had been excessively optimistic. The Institute has been projecting future economic growth of approximately 3% per year. Every prognosis has proven incorrect and the Report programmer asked, “what will happen if there can no longer be rapid economic growth?” One answer is that it is the unemployed who will pay the price. Klas Eklund, senior economist at the Swedish bank SEB, stated his opinion that the forecasters at the National Institute of Economic Research had been far too optimistic and that most people now understand this.

Historically, economic downturns have always been followed by growth but Klas Eklund now believes that this coupling is no longer valid…

View original post 523 more words

The next step in complementary currency

Cover_biomassComplementary currencies like the Bristol Pound act as vouchers for national currency. You swap one Bristol Pound for a Bank of England pound at a  1:1 or 1:0,9 rate. The benefit of a currency like that is that it encourages money to stay in the local economy (jobs with it). The Bristol Pound is valid only locally.

The question is, can complementary currencies take a next step, towards keeping money locally AND stimulating the green economy – an economy where nutrients recycle instead of being brought from outside (entailing a large expenditure of fossil fuel) and an economy where wind, biomass and sun provide the energy.

A recent updated version of a report from Stephen Hinton Consulting demonstrates one way that might be achieved.

The vouchers are not swapped for national currency but for sorted biomass, and for promises to sequester carbon in the soil.

Learn more about this proposal in the white paper.

A complementary currency to drive a cityR5 (.pdf)