Saturday, October 26, 2019
Friday, October 25, 2019
'A Breath of Fresh Air': Offshore Wind Power Could Produce More Electricity Than World Uses
"Let's get going!"
Friday, October 25, 2019
A new report from the International
Energy Agency released Friday claims that wind power could be a $1 trillion
business by 2040 and that the power provided by the green technology has the
potential to outstrip global energy needs.
"Talk about a breath of
fresh air," tweeted writer Steven E. de Souza.
The IEA report looks
at the business of wind power and opines that as investment increases
and the technology becomes cheaper, the sector could explode.
The IEA finds that global
offshore wind capacity may increase 15-fold and attract around $1 trillion of
cumulative investment by 2040. This is driven by falling costs, supportive
government policies and some remarkable technological progress, such as larger
turbines and floating foundations. That's just the start—the IEA report finds
that offshore wind technology has the potential to grow far more strongly with
stepped-up support from policy makers.
"Offshore wind currently
provides just 0.3% of global power generation, but its potential is
vast," said IEA
executive director Fatih Birol.
It would take a major
infrastructural commitment to develop wind power to the point that the
renewable energy resource could take over the majority of global energy needs,
but it's not impossible. As The Guardian pointed
out Friday, "if windfarms were built across all useable sites
which are no further than 60km (37 miles) off the coast, and where coastal
waters are no deeper than 60 metres, they could generate 36,000 terawatt hours
of renewable electricity a year."
"This would easily
meeting the current global demand for electricity of 23,000 terawatt
hours," added The Guardian.
Such a change in worldwide
energy demand would require a massive investment of "public pressure,
business leadership, and political leadership," green group Friends of the
Earth said on
Twitter.
350 Action founder Bill
McKibben saw no
need to wait.
"Wind turbines in the
shallow parts of the planet's oceans can provide more electricity than the
planet uses," McKibben tweeted. "So let's get going!"
Two Leading Economists Say Medicare for All Would Give Workers 'Biggest Take-Home Pay Raise in a Generation'
Friday, October 25, 2019
"Supporters of Medicare
for All are right. Funding universal health insurance through taxes would lead
to a large tax cut for the vast majority of workers."
Medicare for All would give
most U.S. workers "the biggest take-home pay raise in a generation,"
two economists from the University of California, Berkeley said Friday,
countering one of the main insurance industry talking points against single-payer.
In an op-ed for The
Guardian, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman directly challenged the claim that
Medicare for All would "involve massive tax increases for the middle
class," an attack line centrist Democratic presidential candidates like
former Vice President Joe
Biden and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete
Buttigieg have recently deployed against the popular
proposal.
"Supporters of Medicare
for All are right," said Saez and Zucman, leading experts on income and
wealth inequality. "Funding universal health insurance through taxes would
lead to a large tax cut for the vast majority of workers."
The two economists argued that
health insurance premiums are effectively taxes taken out of workers' paychecks
and paid to for-profit insurance companies instead of the government.
"Insurance premiums are
the most regressive possible type of tax: a poll tax. The secretary pays the same
amount as the executive," Saez and Zucman wrote. "Proposals such as
Medicare for All would replace the current privatized poll tax by taxes based
on ability to pay. Some believe that it would result in a big tax increase for
America's middle class."
But the Medicare for All
legislation authored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and backed by Sen.
Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) "would, in fact, lead to large income gains for
the vast majority of workers" by eliminating private health insurance premiums,
Saez and Zucman said.
The economists offered an
example:
Take again the case of a
secretary earning $50,000 in wage and currently contributing $15,000 through
her employer to an insurance company. With universal health insurance, her wage
would rise to $65,000—her full labor compensation. With an income tax of
6%—which, if applied to a base large enough, would be enough to fund universal
health insurance—she would have to pay about $4,000 more in tax. But the net
gain would be enormous: $11,000. Instead of taking home $50,000, the secretary
would take home $61,000.
"With smart new
taxes—such as broad income taxes exempting low wages and retirees—it is
possible to make the vast majority of the population win from a transition to
universal health insurance," said Saez and Zucman.
The Sanders presidential
campaign quickly seized upon the Saez and Zucman op-ed to bolster the argument
that 2020 Democrats attacking Medicare for All as a tax hike on the middle
class are being dishonest.
"Industry-bankrolled
presidential candidates have spent months reciting GOP talking points claiming that Bernie's Medicare for
All plan would raise middle class taxes—but as of this morning, those wildly
dishonest claims have been comprehensively debunked by renowned
economists," Sanders' speechwriter David Sirota wrote in the campaign's
Bern Notice newsletter.
The Saez and Zucman op-ed
comes as Sanders and Warren are facing a barrage of questions from the media
and 2020 Democratic rivals over how they are going to "pay for"
Medicare for All, even though observers have noted that the incremental alternatives
offered by Biden and Buttigieg could
cost as much as single-payer over
the long run.
Sanders in April unveiled
a list of possible financing mechanisms alongside his 100-page
Medicare for All legislation. The slate of proposals Sanders offered included a
70% top marginal tax rate on Americans earning over $10 million per year, a 77%
top tax rate on estates above $1 billion, and a 4% income-based payroll tax
that would exempt the first $29,000 in income for a family of four.
"Under every single one
of these options," Sanders said at the time, "the average American
family will save thousands of dollars a year because it will no longer be
writing large checks to private health insurance companies."
The Washington Post reported Thursday
that Warren is fielding advice from internal and outside economic advisers on
how to finance Medicare for All.
"Robert C. Hockett, a
Cornell University professor who has also advised Warren and Sanders, said he
has urged Warren's team to propose financing Medicare for All in part with a
'public premium' that would function similarly to a tax," according to
the Post. "Under this idea, Warren would propose raising revenue for
a Medicare for All fund from a premium charge that would go to the government
rather than a private insurance company."
Robert Pollin, an economist at
the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author
of a 2018 study that found Medicare for All could save the U.S. $5.1
trillion over 10 years, told the Post that two-thirds of the
single-payer program can be funded by redirecting existing government
healthcare spending from Medicare, Medicaid, and the Department of Veterans
Affairs.
Pollin emphasized to the Post that
the basics of funding Medicare for All "are very simple."
"It drives me nuts when
people say this is so complicated. It's not," Pollin said.
As Pollin put
it during The Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlingon, Vermont last
year, "It's easy to pay for something that costs less."
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