To fund them he is suggesting a tax on carbon emissions in his latest book  Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits

Says Bjørn, quoted in the Guardian,

“The point I’ve always been making is it’s not the end of the world,” he told the Guardian. “That’s why we should be measuring up to what everybody else says, which is we should be spending our money well.”

This concurs with the Foundation’s views on both Carbon Fees and Investment.

Every financial expense is also a financial income and every financial debt is also a financial asset, by definition. Say’s Law for a monetary economy is based on these obvious facts. The essence of Say’s Law is that the expenses for the production are also exactly the incomes needed to make it possible to buy everything that has been produced.

Expressed in such terms Say’s Law is valid, by definition. However this does not guarantee that all the incomes in a monetary economy are actually used for consumption or that all the goods which have been produced are demanded. Consequently Say’s Law is not always valid if expressed as; “The supply creates its own demand”.

Although the important difference between the potentially possible demand and the actual demand has been recognized the monetary and fiscal policies are still both inefficient and potentially dangerous due to the absence of a sound incentive structure in the economy.

Despite the occurrence of a relatively high rate of unemployment in most countries, the fact is that the number of societally beneficial and profitable work tasks is, and always will be, unlimited.

Furthermore, financial assets, like for example money, are symbols that can always be created at will, in sufficient amount, to make it possible to pay for all work that can be done.

Finally, there is no law of nature preventing the rules in the economic system to be designed in a way that reward a sufficiently high demand, consumption and employment and at the same time reward investment, production and supply to a sufficient degree so that consumer price inflation is avoided.

One step in the right direction could be the use of stabilizing feedback control, for example of the market price of the stock of real assets, as a means of harnessing the rate of credit expansion and securing the financial system.

Recessions and depressions resulting in high, involuntary unemployment are just as unnecessary as they are harmful, in the light of the financial and logical facts mentioned above. However, due to an unsuitable, unpsychological and ineffective economic policy which has created a more or less harmful incentive structure in the economy, there has almost always been an unnecessary waste of capital, both of real capital and of natural capital but worst of all of human capital, sometimes reaching absurd levels.

No law of nature prevents a societally beneficial redistribution of purchasing power in the economy through a regular repayment of money, in equal amounts to all. The redistribution can, with advantage, be financed through an equal percentage tax on every wage income and/or fees on harmful emissions, in a fair and equal manner.

These simple facts ought to be sufficient to guide every honest economist to a reassessment of the basic principles of the prevailing economic policy which, despite generations of accumulated experience, is still lacking sufficient knowledge (wisdom) to solve one of its most elementary tasks; namely to prevent the origination of self-inflicted economic imbalances and endogenous crises. Unnecessary crises causing vicious circles of decreasing demand and increasing unemployment, resulting in an unfairly allotted suffering, where those who are the least guilty of the origination of the crises often are the hardest afflicted by their harmful effects and where those who have the power to control the economy seem to be totally devoid of accountability.

Copyright © 2010 The Swedish Sustainable Economy Foundation May be copied if source is acknowledged

This discussion paper presents Höglund’s Interest rate rule: a new paradigm within the field of macroeconomics. It suggests practical methods to maintain an optimally strong, environmentally compliant and genuinely sustainable, employment-conducive demand in the economy.

Download the publication here  An-economic-paradigm-for-stable-sustainable-development

Swedish version ett-ekonomiskt-paradigm-for-stabil-hallbar-utveckling

Humanity has demanded all the ecological services – from filtering CO2 to producing the raw materials for food – that nature can regenerate this year. For the rest of the year, we will meet our ecological demand by depleting resource stocks and accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

This is why there is a need for a new economic paradigm to match economic realities with ecosystem realities.

David Korten is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, president of the People-Centered Development Forum, and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies(BALLE).

Following the publication of his book,
Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, he has formulated these ten common sense principles for the new economy.

As David puts it; “ I find hope in the fact that millions of people the world over are seeing through the moral and practical fallacies underlying the Wall Street economy and—by contributing to the creation of a New Economy—are taking charge of their economic lives”.
Read the full article here.

1. The proper purpose of an economy is to secure just, sustainable, and joyful livelihoods for all.
2. GDP is a measure of the economic cost of producing a given level of human well-being and happiness. In the economy, as in any well-run business, the goal should be to minimize cost, not maximize it.
3. A rational reallocation of real resources can reduce the human burden on the Earth’s biosphere and simultaneously improve the health and happiness of all. The Wall Street economy wastes enormous resources on things that actually reduce the quality of our lives—war, automobile dependence, suburban sprawl, energy-inefficient buildings, financial speculation, advertising, incarceration for minor, victimless crimes. The most important step toward bringing ourselves into balance with the biosphere is to eliminate the things that are bad for our health and happiness.
4. Markets allocate efficiently only within a framework of appropriate rules to maintain competition, cost internalization, balanced trade, domestic investment, and equality.
5. A proper money system roots the power to create and allocate money in people and communities in order to facilitate the creation of livelihoods and ecologically balanced community wealth. Money properly serves life, not the reverse.
6. Money, which is easily created with a simple accounting entry, should never be the deciding constraint in making public resource allocation decisions. This is particularly obvious in the case of economic recessions or depressions, which occur when money fails to flow to where it is needed to put people to work producing essential goods and services. If money is the only lack, then make the accounting entry and get on with it.
7. Speculation, the inflation of financial bubbles, risk externalization, the extraction of usury, and the use of creative accounting to create money from nothing, unrelated to the creation of anything of real value, serve no valid social purpose.
8. Greed is not a virtue; sharing is not a sin. If your primary business purpose is not to serve the community, you have no business being in business.
9. The only legitimate reason for government to issue a corporate charter extending special privileges favoring a particular enterprise is to serve a clearly defined public purpose. That purpose should be clearly stated in the corporate charter and be subject to periodic review.
10. Public policy properly favors local investors and businesses dedicated to creating community wealth over investors and businesses that come only to extract it. The former are most likely to be investors and businesses with strong roots in the communities in which they do business. We properly favor them.

This Bank is different: learn how.

The article goes on to state how the clinical, detailed and lifeless analysis diverts attention from people and the real problems facing us.

He goes on: “Economic thinking is putting the whole world into debt. The cheques being written today cannot be paid either by coming generations or in Earth resources. We go running towards the abyss hoping someone will invent a parachute, not pausing once to consider if we are measuring the right things”.

We choose to measure our society against one single axiom -the indisputable  good of  economic growth.

We  agree, and applaud the newspaper SVD in speaking up against the work of the Institute - accepting of course that the Institute is only doing its job.  It  is assigned to measure and forecast using GNP by a government who should know better. Furthermore, its assignment does not include discerning between good growth (i.e. sales of food ) and “bad growth” (i.e. economic activities that that harm humans or the environment - for example by churning out massive amounts of carbon dioxide ).

More critical thinking is needed if we are to develop society to be able to show resilience to the challenges ahead - including our climate, energy depletion and economic difficulties.

Read the article in Swedish here.

Raised in a background of technology and business, Mr. Fiorio has extensive experience in sales, marketing, and management of private companies. Within the last 30 years, he has directed companies in the areas of aviation, real estate, mining, technology, and import-export into profitability. Presently he is also a trustee of a multi million dollar foundation in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area.

We have three major challenges all nations need to rise to: Climate change, Peak oil and the economic crisis.

Posted by Stephen Hinton, Board of trustees and Steering group member, Transtion Sweden

Yale School of Management senior faculty fellow Bruce Judson makes the case that revolution is a real possibility in America. The central precursors that were present before the dissolution of the Soviet Union are present today—extreme economic inequality and an increasingly impoverished middle class. He makes the most disturbing case yet for why our economics are leading us inevitably toward a devastating crisis. When Franklin Roosevelt faced a similar situation, he was saved by World War II. This time, the conflict may be at home, not abroad.

In It Could Happen Here, Hudson explores how extreme (and growing) economic inequality in the United States can ultimately lead to political instability. The US is currently at the highest levels of economic inequality in the recorded history of the Republic (with the top 10% of families receiving about 50% of all income). As economic inequality increases, the levels of anger, mistrust, and political polarization within nations grow. At some point extreme economic inequality can lead to political paralysis and even political instability.

From Hudson’s blog: As we hit record, or near record levels of hunger, short and long-term joblessness, foreclosures, and credit card defaults, I am concerned that our nation is accepting the unacceptable. We are becoming tragically complacent.

In October 2008, candidate Obama said:

This country and the dream it represents are being tested in a way that we haven’t seen in nearly a century. And future generations will judge ours by how we respond to this test. Will they say that this was a time when America lost its way and its purpose? …

Or will they say that this was another one of those moments when America overcame? When we battled back from adversity by recognizing that common stake that we have in each other’s success?

I have not forgotten these powerful words or what our nation sought on election day in 2008. After one year in office, I hope that President Obama remembers as well.