We're all going to die!11!!!!1!

The BBC Radio Listen Again service is amazing and wonderful and useful, but in this instance, it is frustrating, because although I can find the programme I want, the section of it I want to highlight is not available to be heard again. But this proves that Dr Elaine Storkey was the speaker on Thought for the Day on Thursday last week, and you'll just have to trust me when I tell that what she was saying was broadly this:

In a time of global economic uncertainty, government policies are performing an about face. Up to now, our economic concern has been with expansion, acquisition and globalisation. It's all about having more. Dr Storkey's argument was that we need to learn to be satisfied with enough. She talked about "the economics of enough" saying that we had to change our economic model to one of contraction, rather than expansion and that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

She didn't go on to make what I think is the next logical point, that we have to change our entire lifestyle if we are to have any hope whatsoever of avoiding self-destruction. My boyfriend is an engineer who designs interior heating, lighting and plumbing systems, while trying to make them as efficient and environmentally friendly as possible. He specialised in renewable technologies in the final year of his degree and tells me it's impossible that all our current energy needs will be met by renewable energy alone. It will have to be nuclear or nothing, unless we're prepared only to use computers when the sun is out or when it's particularly windy.

Driving back from an assignment yesterday, I was listening to Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 and while I've noticed that Jeremy Vine doesn't always go in for the most nuanced of discussions, it was hard not to listen to his studio guest who said most of the usable oil would be gone in 30 years and Vine's own comment that he'd heard somewhere that the planet could actually only support 3 billion of the current global population of 8 billion.

If any of this can be accorded any significance, we need to start changing our lifestyles now. I know we're all going to die anyway, but I'm feeling increasingly millenarian about the whole thing. One of my worst nightmares is that civilisation will collapse and I'll be forced to eat those around me to survive. II honestly don't think nuclear power is either a safe or sensible option given the current political tensions across the globe that show no sign of diminishing.

We should be building big wooden sailing ships so we can still travel when the only power we have is the wind. We should be slowing down our drive for economic growth and start doing things because they are the right thing rather than because they will make us money. We need to live in smaller communities with facilities close by so we can walk and cycle. We need to, as they do in Ludlow, collect all food waste separately from everything else and compost it and use it as biofuel. Locally, we also recycle cans, paper, cardboard and plastic. One of the best things about where I'm living at the moment is that practically everything is recycled. My flatmate and I get through one black binliner of waste that isn't recyclabe or reusable a month. We need to get used to the idea that things will take longer, that travel takes time and the pace of life will have to change.

And then yesterday evening, I drove to my boyfriend's house in Birmingham all alone in my diesel-powered, air-conditioned car. I felt guilty every step of the way. I still did it. I use energy saving lightbulbs, unplug everything when I'm not using it, walk to work and back, shop in the local butchers, grocers and bakers and avoid going to the supermarket at every opportunity. But I think we're still doomed.

(cross-posted to An immedia reaction)

Economy of beer.

I've got a friend who's an investment banker. This means he's pretty knowledgeable on economic issues. He's also politically conservative, so we argue quite a lot. When we talk about economics, I have to refuse to argue points, because if I try, I'll lose. Not necessarily because I'm holding the wrong position (though clearly sometimes I am), but because he can make complex economic statements (about 'growth' and 'interest' and 'recession' and other important sounding words) that he doesn't have to defend, because I don't have the knowledge to attack them. This is pretty annoying.

The point of this post, though, isn't to point out how annoyed I am that I can't argue economic points with him, but to paste an email he sent me today:

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20." Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.

But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20,"declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I got"

"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

As someone who can't argue about economics, naturally, I can't address this with any hope of being right, but if I were to try to, I'd probably say that

• buying beer in a bar is not analogous to tax, which funds vital public services without which society couldn't function.
  
• an arbitrary drop in the cost of beer is not analogous to a tax decrease, which would require a decrease in service quality or a massive increase in service efficiency.
• the reaction of the less well off to the better off is unrealistic - complain, yes, 'beat up', no. And if the beating up of the rich person was a clever analogy for something else, then it passed me by. Yes, people are envious of those richer than themselves. D'you know what the compensation for being envied is? Having a lot of money.
• it's interesting that the rich man at the end of the analogy decides to stop helping those that don't appreciate him and move his money to places with 'friendlier' atmosphere towards him and his money. Without him, they can't buy beer (for which read access schools, hospitals or recieve welfare). But what do they matter to the rich man - he's found somewhere that 'appreciates' his money more, and that's what's important.

Clearly there is an important point here - we are dependent to a large extent on the money brought in from taxing high earners, and there is a careful balancing act involved in taking as much as possible from them without taking so much that they leave for a country with more favourable rates.

I don't know what the answer is (see first paragraph), but I don't think this kind of over-simplified analogy helps us get any closer to one.