[MCN] Is the Green New Deal a socialist scheme?

[Lance Olsen]

The Wall Street Journal  February 6, 2019

ECONOMY  <https://www.wsj.com/news/economy> CAPITAL ACCOUNT <https://www.wsj.com/news/types/capital-account>

Venezuela’s Collapse Exposes the Fake Socialism Debated in U.S.


Excerpts: Some polls find young American adults prefer socialism to capitalism, and self-described democratic socialists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York congresswoman, and Bernie Sanders, a Vermont senator, have captured the hearts and minds of the Democratic Party. 

Right on cue, critics say they’d turn the U.S. into Venezuela. In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Trump condemned Venezuela’s “socialist policies,” then vowed: “America will never be a socialist country.” 

Would these people actually know socialism if they saw it? Taxing the rich, Medicare-for-all, and a Green New Deal that replaces fossil fuels with renewables are certainly liberal, probably radical, possibly unwise.

But socialist? Hardly.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has proposed a top income-tax rate of up to 70%, where it stood as recently 1981. 

If the federal government ends up financing significant expansion of renewable energy under a Green New Deal, it wouldn’t be unprecedented: it created the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s and the Interstate highway system in the 1950s because their social benefits didn’t lend themselves to private investment. 

These Democratic proposals conscript private capital in the pursuit of social priorities much as President Trump already has by threatening companies who shift production out of the U.S., raise the prices of drugs or publish critical news.


   ========++++++.  Food: Heat has consequences +++++=======
 
“We used observational data and output from 23 global climate models to show a high probability 
(>90%) that growing season temperatures in the tropics and subtropics by the end of the 21st 
century will exceed the most extreme seasonal temperatures recorded from 1900 to 2006. 

"In temperate regions, the hottest seasons on record will represent the future norm in many locations.
 
“Coping with the short-run challenge of food price volatility is daunting. But the longer-term 
challenge of avoiding a perpetual food crisis under conditions of global warming is far more 
serious. “
 
David. S. Battisti  and Rosamond L. Naylor.
Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat. 
SCIENCE 9 JANUARY 2009
 

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