Showing posts with label gordon brown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gordon brown. Show all posts

Monday, April 06, 2020

The Virus Asks For Out Of The Box Thinking

  1. The three week lockdown imposed upon India is the right thing to do, and every country will have to follow suit. It is the cheapest way. Testing is not available.
  2. But India executed it badly. You have to have a plan to feed everyone. Just stay home. We will feed you for three weeks. That means the demand and supply thing will have to break. This is an emergency. It is still demand and supply, but there is no money involved. You feed everyone who is hungry. You deliver food to homes.
  3. Three weeks are enough time for the infected to get symptomatic. You identify them and you isolate them. They basically stay in their homes, the mildly symptomatic do. One thing to try is you hover your head over boiling water in a bowl, and cover your head with a towel, and you inhale the steam for a few minutes. The dire cases go to the hospitals. The world's factories need to produce the basic equipment and medicine like FDR produced planes for World War II. Call a truce to the China-US trade war. It was always stupid. Now it is fatal. You don't want a Spanish Flu redux. You don't want a hundred million dead.
  4. The non-infected will have to go back to work otherwise on top of the pandemic we will have tremendous hunger. And if the hunger is widespread enough, societies will start to collapse. That is chaos. You will see uncontrollable riots. But too many jobs will have been destroyed in three weeks. Many people will not have the option to simply go back to work. You need Universal Basic Income. Every human being on earth should be given $100 a month immediately. No questions asked. It can not be a one-time thing. It could easily be a year. Done right, it can be indefinite.
  5. But $100 will not cut it in a place like the US. You will need $1,000.
  6. This UBI is the only thing that can resurrect the world economy.
  7. This virus can not be tackled in any one country. It will have to be tackled simultaneously in every country.
  8. We need a world government. And we need it at zip speed. I would not mind if someone like Barack Obama steps in to become the first President Of The World. Gordon Brown has broached the idea. Former heads of state are best positioned to rally around the idea and make it happen.
  9. When the vaccine shows up -- the best estimate is 18 months -- and hopefully it comes in the form of a band-aid, it needs to be taken to everybody. Only a world government can do it. A world government with real teeth.
  10. This is the dress rehearsal for climate change. The coronavirus is forcing the world to do what needs to be done to fight climate change.
Inequality And Climate Change Are Existential: A Blueprint For Survival
Towards A World Government





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Wednesday, April 01, 2020

The Virus And The Politicians



Something that is the Great Depression and World War II combined is going to be a tall task for anybody, let alone mediocre politicians elected to high office, but the scale and rapidity of the spread of this pandemic, now virtually gone to all countries and spreading fast still has particularly exposed deficiencies in leadership, both of individuals and political systems. This is no argument against democracy, for South Korea seems to have done pretty well so far. It is said the genius of the US constitution is that even an idiot can run the country. I never fully bought into that.

But those who doubted Trump's ability to deliver from the get-go now find themselves uncomfortably with front seats to the unfolding tragedy. And Trump is not alone. There is this guy in Brazil basically inciting riots. He is a Trump clone. Modi's three weeks closing down of the country was not a bad idea, but the implementation was so shoddy, there was no implementation, there was just an announcement; as if the demonetization disaster was not enough. India finds itself with crowds of people moving around reminding many of a similar phenomenon during partition. Instead of being inside homes, people are clogging the roads.

The NYC Mayor has been missing in action while he takes to the cameras like he were some opposition leader demanding action. NYC has become Italy and it still is not seeing lockdown.

It is always easier when you are not actually running a country. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown went on record asking to set up a world government from scratch. That is the most sense any politician has made during this pandemic so far. Gordon Brown should rally as many former heads of state as possible to the idea and make it happen.

Angela Merkel is a chemist by training. And it showed.

Both China and South Korea, and also Hong Kong and Singapore, all with diverse political systems, have done a pretty good job.

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Thursday, August 11, 2011

Global New Deal Needed

DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 25JAN08 - Gordon Brown, Pri...Image via WikipediaI am in agreement with Gordon Brown.
Gordon Brown: Global New Deal: America’s path to growth through higher consumption is blocked by high personal borrowing and negative equity. Another well-trodden road out of recession—a private investment spurt—has failed to materialize as businesses hoard cash in the absence of a growing home market. ........ And now that the debt deal will forestall the other traditional path—a stimulus from public investment—just one route to sustained growth remains that can prevent a decade of high American unemployment. ....... Obama should now refocus his attention on securing a global growth pact that will free the world as a whole, and particularly the West, from years of anemic growth. ....... far bolder: “America’s plan for the world economy”—to achieve for global trade and growth now what Gen. George Marshall’s plan did for the faltering world of the 1940s. ........ a “global New Deal” ....... Today, 60 percent of China’s income comes from exports, while America’s export share is just 25 percent. ..... The need is urgent because as Asia’s middle classes double in the next decade, its consumer market will dwarf all others, accounting for 40 percent of all global consumer spending. Without a bigger footprint in Asia, America will be left behind. ....... if—as predicted—India, China, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Turkey, South Korea, Indonesia, and Russia, which today buy just 15 percent of U.S. exports, account for 70 percent of future global growth, then no American company can afford to stay at home. ........ Europe’s only hope of salvation from a decade of high unemployment is to export its way to growth. ....... an up-skilling of America’s middle class and calls for U.S. public and private sectors to frontload investment in education technology and infrastructure. And a global growth pact will require America to agree to common global financial standards that can prevent future financial crises. ......... with each iPad sale, only $4 of profit go to its Asian manufacturers, while $80 go to its American (and British) designers ........ From now until Election Day, the president’s opponents will frame his position as “burdening our children with debt.” Indeed, so adept have those on the right been at playing the politics of fear, on all continents, that even in Australia—a country with virtually no debt—the incumbent Labour government lost its majority when it was faced with a conservative onslaught about deficits. ....... Two thirds of a century ago, after the greatest of depressions and the worst of wars, General Marshall rejected the politics of fear for the economics of hope, and the Marshall Plan pioneered a global program that framed the new world order. It repaid itself many times over, doubling global trade and putting America’s flagging postwar economy on course for its most successful era ever. Now, with the same vision and by accepting that a global new deal is the only way forward, an America reborn can lead again.
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