It is old news that large segments of society have become deeply unhappy with what they see as “the establishment,” especially the political class. The “yellow vest” protests in France, triggered by French President Emmanuel Macron’s move to hike fuel taxes in the name of combating climate change, are just the latest example of the scale of this alienation.
There are good reasons for today’s disgruntlement: Four decades of promises by political leaders of the center-left and center-right, espousing the neoliberal faith that globalization, financialization, deregulation, privatization and a host of related reforms would bring unprecedented prosperity, have gone unfulfilled.
While a tiny elite seems to have done very well, large swaths of the population have fallen out of the middle class and plunged into a new world of vulnerability and insecurity. Even leaders in countries with low, but increasing inequality have felt their public’s wrath.
Illustration: Mountain People
By the numbers, France looks better than most, but it is perceptions, not numbers, that matter; even in France, which avoided some of the extremism of the era of former US president Ronald Reagan and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, things are not going well for many.
When taxes on the very wealthy are lowered, but raised for ordinary citizens to meet budgetary demands — whether from far-off Brussels or from well-off financiers — it should come as no surprise that some are angry.
The yellow vests’ refrain speaks to their concerns: “The government talks about the end of the world. We are worried about the end of the month.”
In short, there is a gross mistrust in governments and politicians, which means that asking for sacrifices today in exchange for the promise of a better life tomorrow is unlikely to pass muster. This is especially true of “trickle down” policies: tax cuts for the rich that eventually are supposed to benefit everyone else.
When I was at the World Bank, the first lesson in policy reform was that sequencing and pacing matter. The promise of the Green New Deal that is now being championed by progressives in the US has both of these elements right.
The Green New Deal is premised on three observations.
First, there are unutilized and underutilized resources — especially human talent — that can be used effectively.
Second, if there were more demand for those with low and medium skills, their wages and standards of living would rise.
Third, a good environment is an essential part of human well-being, today and in the future.
If the challenges of climate change are not met today, huge burdens will be imposed on the next generation.
It is just wrong for this generation to pass these costs on to the next. It is better to leave a legacy of financial debts, which future generations can somehow manage, than to hand down a possibly unmanageable environmental disaster.
Almost 90 years ago, then-US president Franklin D. Roosevelt responded to the Great Depression with his New Deal, a bold package of reforms that touched almost every aspect of the US economy.
However, it is more than the symbolism of the New Deal that is being invoked now. It is its animating purpose: putting people back to work, in the way that Roosevelt did for the US, with its crushing unemployment of the time. Back then, that meant investments in rural electrification, roads and dams.
Economists have debated how effective the New Deal was — its spending was probably too low and not sustained enough to generate the kind of recovery the economy needed. Nonetheless, it left a lasting legacy by transforming the country at a crucial time.
So, too, for a Green New Deal: It could provide public transportation, linking people with jobs, and retrofit the economy to meet the challenge of climate change. At the same time, these investments themselves would create jobs.
It has long been recognized that decarbonization, if done correctly, would be a great job creator, as the economy prepares itself for a world with renewable energy.
Of course, some jobs — for example, those of the 53,000 coal miners in the US — would be lost, and programs are needed to retrain such workers for other jobs, but to return to the refrain, sequencing and pacing matter.
It would make more sense to begin with creating new jobs before the old jobs are destroyed, to ensure that the profits of the oil and coal companies are taxed and the hidden subsidies they receive eliminated, before asking those who are barely getting by to pony up more.
The Green New Deal sends a positive message of what government can do, for this generation of citizens and the next.
It could deliver today what those who are suffering today need most — good jobs. It could also deliver the protections from climate change that are needed for the future.
The Green New Deal would have to be broadened, and this is especially true in countries such as the US, where many ordinary citizens lack access to good education, adequate healthcare or decent housing.
The grassroots movement behind the Green New Deal offers a ray of hope to the badly battered establishment: They should embrace it, flesh it out, and make it part of the progressive agenda.
Something positive is needed to save us from the ugly wave of populism, nativism and protofascism that is sweeping the world.
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is a professor at Columbia University and chief economist at the Roosevelt Institute.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
The US Department of Defense recently released this year’s “Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.” This annual report provides a comprehensive overview of China’s military capabilities, strategic objectives and evolving global ambitions. Taiwan features prominently in this year’s report, as capturing the nation remains central to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) vision of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” a goal he has set for 2049. The report underscores Taiwan’s critical role in China’s long-term strategy, highlighting its significance as a geopolitical flashpoint and a key target in China’s quest to assert dominance
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
The Legislative Yuan passed legislation on Tuesday aimed at supporting the middle-aged generation — defined as people aged 55 or older willing and able to work — in a law initially proposed by Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Legislator Wu Chun-cheng (吳春城) to help the nation transition from an aged society to a super-aged society. The law’s passage was celebrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the TPP. The brief show of unity was welcome news, especially after 10 months of political fighting and unconstitutional amendments that are damaging democracy and the constitutional order, eliciting concern
Following a series of suspected sabotage attacks by Chinese vessels on undersea cables in the Baltic Sea last year, which impacted Europe’s communications and energy infrastructure, an international undersea cable off the coast of Yehliu (野柳) near Keelung was on Friday last week cut by a Chinese freighter. Four cores of the international submarine communication cable connecting Taiwan and the US were damaged. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) dispatched a ship to the site after receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom and located the Shunxin-39, a Cameroon-flagged cargo ship operated by a Hong Kong-registered company and owned by a Chinese
RSS