Little doubt, economic policy will be one of the things experiencing the greatest change due to Global Warming (Climate Change). Always a construct, economic policies have, heretofore, in the main, been determined by the powerful. Seldom, if ever, have they been based on how it should be. If we are lucky, in the very near future, that determination will become a democratic one based on how should it be. If not, we haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell of avoiding a cataclysmic ending. To date, in our addressment of Climate Change, the most powerful impediments to reducing greenhouse gases are being employed in the interest of wealth. Capitalism was always about preserving the power of wealth, an Industrial Age adjustive construct meant to do just
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Ken Melvin considers the following as important: climate change, politics, US/Global Economics
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Little doubt, economic policy will be one of the things experiencing the greatest change due to Global Warming (Climate Change). Always a construct, economic policies have, heretofore, in the main, been determined by the powerful. Seldom, if ever, have they been based on how it should be. If we are lucky, in the very near future, that determination will become a democratic one based on how should it be. If not, we haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell of avoiding a cataclysmic ending.
To date, in our addressment of Climate Change, the most powerful impediments to reducing greenhouse gases are being employed in the interest of wealth. Capitalism was always about preserving the power of wealth, an Industrial Age adjustive construct meant to do just that; was always really wealthism; was never more than an extension of lord and master economics; was thus always antithetic democracy. Either capitalism and its progeny financialism go, or we all do.
Under capitalism, rather government (the people) determine economic policy based on how should it be, it was the power of wealth that did so. Did so in their own interests; not the people’s. In today’s United States of America, wealth has bought and paid for a majority in Congress and on the Supreme Court in its own interest. In wealth’s interest, and contrary science and how should it be, Congress and the Supreme Court have acted to impede efforts to effectively address Climate Change.
Another truism posited to the wealthism model of economics is the wisdom of markets. Whereas capitalism was invented soon after the beginning of the Industrial Age (mid-18th century); the myth of the magic of the market was created from whole cloth mid-20th century. Some people just made it up and began to peddle it in universities like the University of Chicago and through people like Milton Friedman. Did so all in the interests of guess who?
Rather than being just a handy economic tool, markets were now omniscient and wise; fully equivalent the invisible hand. Which was the worse? The audacity? Or, the gullibility?
What good was wealth if one couldn’t do with it what one wanted? The answer was “Free Enterprise” — whatever that means. Go ahead; see what you can come up with. To them, it meant the right to do whatever they wanted to do. A catchy slogan sword with which to slay dragons like the Environmental Protection Agency. Which was the worse?
You may have heard or read somewhere that economics is the study of scarcity and its implications for the use of resources, production of goods and services, growth of production and welfare over time, and a great variety of other complex issues of vital concern to society. May of also heard or read that economics is about making money; about money and wealth. No. Any of these might be a part of an economy.
Economics is the study of how economies work for the purpose of optimizing their performance, and, perhaps, the development of new ones. An economy is a social entity’s aggregate activity of producing or otherwise procuring, and equitably distributing goods and services. A well functioning economy produces and equitably distributes the requisite goods and services for a community in an effective manner. That is how it should be.
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Webster’s:Etymology
earlier oeconomicks “science or art of managing a household” from oeconomick, economike in same sense (Middle English iconomique, borrowed from Middle French yconomique, borrowed from Medieval Latin economica, feminine singular or neuter plural of oeconomicus “relating to the management of a household”) + -ICS — more at ECONOMIC
NOTE: Compare ancient Greek oikonomikḗ “practice of household, administrative or economic management,” oikonomiká (neuter plural) “administrative affairs.”
The Heritage Foundation: Free Enterprise and the Common Good: Economic Science and Political–Economic Art as Complements
Conservative intellectuals, commentators, and politicians are rethinking the relationship between free enterprise and the common good. While critiques of the market have a long history in traditionalist circles, most American conservatives have held for several decades that protecting markets from government was essential for human flourishing. But that consensus is quickly changing as many elements of classical liberalism are now being challenged. The question is not whether to jettison free enterprise in favor of the common good, but rather how to orient free enterprise in support of the common good. This requires properly understanding the common good and how free enterprise affects it. Conservatives must learn to treat hard-nosed economics and humane political economy as complements, not substitutes.
Rand Corporation:
Economic policies are the end results of economic planning: the decisions governments make to influence the production, consumption, and sharing of wealth. RAND research has explored economic policies from the local to the international level, including their effects on international trade and foreign relations, their relation to policies focusing on public health and the environment, and their impact on economic growth and recessions.
Wiki:
Economics (/ˌɛkəˈnɒmɪks, ˌiːkə-/)[1] is a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.[2][3]
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes what’s viewed as basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyzes the economy as a system where production, consumption, saving, and investment interact, and factors affecting it: employment of the resources of labour, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Big_Myth/QlR3EAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1