[MCN] Lifestyle of [ financially comfortable ] spender -> continued emissions alongside a repurposed economy

[Lance Olsen]

“In fact, small and large business have as much in common as the trout and the fisherman ….. The trout and the fisherman may agree, temporarily, on an economic program, but the trout will discover, too late, that the program was not just a mayfly for the trout; there was also the matter of the trout for the fisherman.”

“The agendas of Main Street and Wall Street were to clash repeatedly during the Reagan years, and the administration would consistently demonstrate that, though its heart and lips were with Main Street, its brain was with Manhattan. Monetary, fiscal, and trade policy set Main Street and Wall Street against each other: in all of these areas, and also in its attitude to the critical financial industry, the administration came down on the side of big business.”

Walter Russell Mead. Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition. Houghton Mifflin, 1987

====================================

“The gap between high- and low-income families has widened steadily since about 1980, hitting a new high every year since 1985. “

Business Week, November 21, 1994, p. 72.

===============================

" … the main dangers to the success of capitalism are the very people who would consider themselves its most ardent advocates : the bosses of companies, the owners of companies, and the politicians who tirelessly insist that they are 'pro-business'.”

"Many of the corporate scandals that America, especially, has endured in recent years reflect outright criminality. A lawful order knows what to do with criminals, and pro-business politicians are in truth militantly anti-capitalist if they flinch from cracking down on bosses' crimes."

“… widespread and quite outrageous abuse, by capitalists, of capitalism … The danger exists everywhere in the world, but it matters most in the United States.”

The Economist, Special 160th Anniversary Issue, A Survey of Capitalism and Democracy, June 26-July 4, 2003

==================================

Super-rich increase their share of world's income <https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiKmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jb20vbmV3cy9idXNpbmVzcy01OTU2NTY5MNIBAA?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>
BBC News
Dec 7, 2021

The richest 10% of the population now takes 52% of global income and the poorest half just 8%, it said.

The 228-page report, whose authors are part of a group founded by renowned economist Thomas Piketty, also said that since 1995, billionaires' wealth had risen from 1% to 3%.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59565690


==================================

We're All the 1 Percent – Foreign Policy

https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/were-all-the-1-percent/

Feb 27, 2012 - But the global average is about a fifth of that. So by global standards, America's middle class is also really, really rich. To make it into the richest 1 percent globally, all you need is an income of around $34,000, according to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic.

==================================


Half the world's richest 1% live in the United States - Jan. 4, 2012
https://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/index.htm

Jan 4, 2012 - The United States holds a disproportionate amount of the world’s rich people. It only takes $34,000 a year, after taxes, to be among the richest 1% in the world. ... The rest are mainly scattered throughout Europe, Latin America and a few Asian countries.

==================================

Distribution of wealth - Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth#:~:text=The%20pyramid%20shows%20that%3A,97%25%20of%20the%20total%20wealth.>
Half of the world's net wealth belongs to the top 1%, top 10% of adults hold 85%, while the bottom 90% hold the remaining 15% of the world's total wealth, top 30% of adults hold 97% of the total wealth.
 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth#:~:text=The%20pyramid%20shows%20that%3A,97%25%20of%20the%20total%20wealth.>
==================================

 <https://www.equifax.com/business/product/spending-power/>
Spending Power | Household Discretionary Spending Capacity <https://www.equifax.com/business/product/spending-power/>
https://www.equifax.com › Business <https://www.equifax.com/business/product/spending-power/>

Spending Power. Improve targeting and marketing models with a dollar measure of households' likely capacity to spend, save, or invest.

==================================

Meaning of purchasing power in English <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/purchasing-power>
https://dictionary.cambridge.org › dictionary › purchasi... <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/purchasing-power>
A person's purchasing power is his or her ability to buy goods

==================================

"The big challenge is still to deliver emissions reductions at the pace and scale needed, especially in a world where economies are driven by consumption.”

Sonja van Renssen. 

The inconvenient truth of failed climate policies.
 
Nature Climate Change  Published online: 27 April 2018 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0155-4 

==================================

United Nations Emissions Gap Report 2020

Chapter 6.1
https://wedocs.unep.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/34432/EGR20ch6.pdf?

Bridging the gap – the role of equitable low-carbon lifestyles

“A range of estimates point to a strong correlation between income and emissions, with a highly unequal global distribution of consumption emissions. Such studies estimate that the emissions share of the top 10 per cent of income earners is around 36–49 per cent of the global total, whereas the lowest 50 per cent of income earners account for around 7–15 per cent of all emissions (Chakravarty et al. 2009; Chancel and Piketty 2015; Oxfam 2015; Hubacek et al. 2017; Dorband et al. 2019; Oxfam and Stockholm Environment Institute [SEI] 2020). This disparity is particularly stark where studies have estimated footprints among the very highest-income, highest emitters: the combined emissions share of the top 1 per cent of income earners has been found to very likely be larger than – and perhaps double – that of the bottom 50 per cent (Chancel and Piketty 2015; Oxfam and SEI 2020). Around half the consumption emissions of the global top 10 per cent and 1 per cent are associated with citizens of high-income countries, and most 63 Emissions Gap Report 2020 of the other half with citizens in middle-income countries (Chancel and Piketty 2015; Oxfam and SEI 2020). One study estimates that the ‘super-rich’ top 0.1 per cent of earners have per capita emissions of around 217  tCO2 – several hundred times greater than the average of the poorest half of the global population (Oxfam and SEI 2020). Estimates of the per capita CO2 consumption emissions of different global income groups are shown in figure 6.1, based on Oxfam and SEI (2020). This analysis estimates per capita CO2 emissions rather than CO2-equivalent, and allocates all consumption emissions to individuals rather than just those associated with household consumption. To indicate the relative scale of lifestyle emission changes required, a target for global average per capita consumption emissions of 2.1 tCO2 per capita in 2030 is also shown, as implied by 1.5°C-consistent pathways estimated by Oxfam (2020). Estimates in figure 6.1 show that per capita consumption emissions of those in the global top 10 per cent of income earners would need to be reduced to about one-tenth of their current level by 2030, and those of the top 1 per cent by at least a factor of 30, while those of the poorest 50 per cent could increase by around three times their current level.”


https://wedocs.unep.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/34432/EGR20ch6.pdf?
===========================

“Ten thousand years ago there were between 1 and 5 million people on the planet.  There was plenty of room to expand and move, and resources seemed endless.”

Niles Eldredge. Dominion. 1995. University of California Press.

===========================

“It was not until the … publication in 1865 of William Stanley Jevons' The Coal Question, that some became aware that the coal deposits were exhaustible. …. It was not until the 1920's that a few people began to realize the supplies of fossil fuels had distinct limits.”

John U. Nef.  "An Early Energy Crisis and its Consequences," 
Scientific American,  November 1977


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