How much money does a family need?

Complicated question.

Recent data about the median personal income for people over 25 in the US is $32,140.

Accordingly, if everyone in the US lived within a family composed of two adults and two kids and if all the country’s revenues were divided evenly, every household would earn $64,280. Which would be quite decent.

But even a communist approach wouldn’t solve everything.

Today humanity uses the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste.

If everyone was consuming as enthusiastically as the United States, that’s 4.5 planets we would need.

How do we balance the fights against poverty and for sustainability?

Hard to say, because there is no industrialized country with a reasonable footprint.

The world-average ecological footprint in 2007 was 2.7 global hectares per person (18.0 billion in total). With a world-average biocapacity of 1.8 global hectares per person (12 billion in total).

The most sustainable industrialized countries average 5 gha, which is still 3 times what would be sustainable.

There is no model to follow. We have rich countries with unsustainable lifestyle and countries that are sustainable because they are too poor to be wasteful.

There’s nearly 200 countries and none of them have been able so far to find a balance between wealth and sustainability.

And so, right now, the median family of 4 in the US is still earning $64,280. Should we accept to cut this amount in half?

Innovation, ingenuity and common sense can easily bring the current global hectares per person in the US from 8 to 5. And maybe rich countries can go down to 3.5 gha without too much pain.

But then what?

Can we accept to give up wealth and material comfort to bring down our ecological footprint to what our planet can support?

Or do we say that some people deserve to be rich even if it means destroying everyone’s future?

When we’ll be interested to answer this question, the Earth’s biocapacity will have been weakened and reduced by our insane greed. Whatever is left will be ours to share. It might not be much.

It is my understanding of human history that there used to be countless models of successful balance between wealth and sustainability. But these models have been forcefully abolished by colonial empires.

Now I know why White supremacists rather hide in a robe and a hat

More about Jason Richwine.

 

Most ironic news of the millenium

Heritage study co-author opposed letting in immigrants with low IQs

Washington Post

Or…

Heritage Study Author: ‘Hispanic Immigrants Will Have Low-IQ Children’

The Heritage Foundation’s analysis of the economic consequences of immigration reform uses absurd methodology to come to conclusions entirely at odds with the organization’s own findings in 2006. Perhaps one explanation for this incoherence is that one of the paper’s coauthors, a new hire, opposes Hispanic immigration because he thinks Latinos are stupid.

‘No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.‘

Think Progress

the cost of the most basic compassion

The factory collapse in Bangladesh has now claimed upward of 700 lives, making it the worst industrial disaster in Bangladesh and the most deadly one in the history of the garment industry. As has been widely reported, workers were hesitant to enter the building on the day of the collapse due to visible cracks in the building.

Since the disaster, many have urged large retail corporations to upgrade the working conditions in the factories from which they source their products. Three hundred large companies had previously refused to sign a pledge to do so before the collapse, citing costs. The need for low prices and fast production is driven in large part by American demand for cheap clothing. So how much would clothing prices rise for the average consumer if all of the costs of upgrading Bangladesh factories were passed on to them?

According to an estimate provided by the Worker Rights Consortium, it could be as little as 10 cents per article of clothing. The group comes to this figure by estimating that building renovation, safety equipment installation, and other related costs would come to about $3 billion, which is says is a high estimate that assumes virtually all factory buildings need major renovations, as some may not. Spreading that cost over five years, it comes to $600 million each year, and tacking 10 cents on to each of the roughly 7 billion garments exported from the country each year would easily cover that cost. After the initial investment in renovations, the group says the costs of maintenance will drop significantly.

Think Progress

Don’t get it wrong

Don’t get it wrong, people.

death penalty news on the day

Maryland became the 18th state to abolish the death penalty Thursday, as Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) signed the bill he vied for into law.

Think Progress

Meanwhile in Mississippi

Mississippi has set an execution date for Willie Jerome Manning next week, without ever having tested readily available DNA from the scene of the abduction and murder in which Manning was convicted. In a 5-4 decision Thursday, the Mississippi Supreme Court said DNA testing was not necessary due to the “overwhelming evidence in his case.”  The Innocence Project provides background about the nature of that evidence:

Manning was convicted of the abduction and murder of Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller in 1992 on mostly circumstantial evidence, including the testimony of a jailhouse informant who had previously given a statement implicating another person. No physical evidence has ever linked him to the crime, and he has consistently maintained his innocence. He has been seeking post-conviction DNA testing for years, insisting that technological strides made in the past 20 years could prove him innocent of the crime.

During trial, the prosecutor reasoned that a hair sample found in the victim’s car belonged to Manning because both Manning and the hair sample were African American. Dissenting Justice Leslie King pointed out, ”Should a DNA test demonstrate that the African-American hairs found in Miller’s cart did not belong to Manning, then the infirmity in the prosecution’s emphasis on the importance of the evidence would be exposed. And it would certainly raise reasonable questions regarding Manning’s guilt.” But the majority nonetheless held such testing would not change the outcome of the case, disregarding the substantial evidence that informant testing is susceptible to bias and manipulation, and that the death penalty system is fraught with racial bias.

Even though DNA would supplant the prosecutor’s speculation about the hair sample with definitive scientific evidence, both the majority in Thursday’s ruling and the U.S. Supreme Court have refused to stand up for defendants’ right to raise the most robust defense possible. In a 2009 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a defendant who was willing to pay for a DNA test at his own expense was not entitled to the test, because allowing William Osburne to prove his potential innocence risks “unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice.”

Manning’s inability to access evidence in his own case is alarmingly common. Because it is law enforcement officers who investigate crimes, prosecutors are the gatekeepers to evidence that should be equally available to both parties, and they are institutionally positioned to block evidence that might threaten the convictions they’ve secured. Nonetheless, some states and law enforcers recognize that it is in everybody’s best interests to have all available evidence. Nine states have laws granting defense lawyers access to a national DNA database. And even Texas’ conservative attorney general recently came out in support of mandatory DNA testing. Manning’s execution is now scheduled for May 7, but his attorney has filed another motion asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision.

Think Progress

the smell of success

I have a great idea for a TV series about a high school chemistry teacher who after being diagnosed with cancer decides to get even with people he knows in a passive-aggressive way. Title: Breaking wind.