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[00:00:00] Our manifesto is based on investing to mend broken Britain and offer real hope and real change. Our manifesto is about the sort of country we want to live in, where we move beyond the politics of fear and distrust.
[00:00:16] The sort of safe and brighter future we want to build for our children, the sort of world we want to build together. A world where everyone has access to the health services they need. Everyone has a warm and secure home and we all have clean air to breathe.
[00:00:31] This is the Debunking Economics podcast with Steve Keen and Phil Dobbie. Well that was Carla, Dania and Adrian Ramsey launching the Greens manifesto in the run-up to the UK election.
[00:00:45] Now it is just as well that they mentioned clean air at the end there because they did seem to talk a lot about fixing the health service and tackling the cost of living crisis
[00:00:53] but not really much mention of the climate emergency and yet shouldn't that be the number one issue for the Greens? And do we have a problem when parties that you'd hope would challenge conventional thinking shift into the mainstream?
[00:01:07] Is that what's happened to the Greens? That's this week on the Debunking Economics podcast with Steve Keen. I'm Phil Dobbie, welcome along. Well perhaps the biggest sign about how entrenched the neoclassical thinking is in the UK and around the world
[00:01:27] is the whole election process which they're going through in the UK at the moment and perhaps in particular the policy direction of the Greens in the UK. Well why are we picking on the Greens?
[00:01:37] Well you'd think if you believe that radical change was needed to cope with climate change and all the other issues that the UK faces like wealth disparity for example you'd think that the Greens would be the one pushing the boat out on those issues
[00:01:52] but I had one commentator calling their manifesto radical but it wasn't really. We'll go through some of it today and yet you know Steve feels like this is an opportunity miss
[00:02:04] because they have a lot of exposure to an issue which is very important obviously to all of us. They're never going to be the majority government but they will get coverage at this time in the UK in the build up to the election.
[00:02:17] They'll only ever get a few seats at best so you think they'd be using this time to challenge the orthodoxy but they're not really are they? No I mean it's a pretty boring manifesto.
[00:02:31] I mean the thing that's most remarkable about me for the manifesto was probably the point size is what 20 to 25 point or something like that. It's not a manifesto, it's an election leaflet. So that alone that's a bit of a sign with the state of modern civilisation
[00:02:48] where dumbed ourselves down so dramatically compared to the communist manifesto which you pretty much needed today's university degree be able to read the damn thing and the whole thing with the Greens manifesto was point size so anybody with who's half blind
[00:03:06] and also has a 15 minute attention span can read the entire thing. Well I mean let's just play on that for a point because I think that is a concern isn't it?
[00:03:16] So I mean a lot of people listening to this podcast won't have, fortunately won't have been through the whole election cycle in the UK but will have been in their own respective countries and found it perhaps just equally as disheartening.
[00:03:29] But there's so many grabs about stuff like you know just it is Rishi Sunak too privileged you know what did his parents have to forego for him to go to his expensive school.
[00:03:42] I mean none of this is policy, policy just seems to get pushed aside it's like who cares and it's like who's the safe pair of hands people actually don't want to pay attention to policy detail
[00:03:55] and if they do then it's really just you know the question that comes back how are you going to pay for it? You can understand that for Labour and Conservative to some extent as you say
[00:04:09] because they are the ones who are going to be you know pilloried in the press that they deviate from what Galbraith called the conventional wisdom so that's one reason that they've got to know you would have seen I imagine there's actually a Labour Party ad saying
[00:04:23] there is no magic money tree. I mean Jesus what's going on what we've even forgotten about who was the Prime Minister, the Tory Prime Minister who made that line? The woman I've forgotten her name now.
[00:04:35] Theresa May is who you're thinking of I think yeah the very wooden Prime Minister who talked about the magic money tree. So here's the Labour Party literally quoting a Tory Prime Minister who got kicked out by her own party
[00:04:47] let alone the electorate and there it is you know there is no magic money tree that's straight from her debate with Jeremy Corbyn and I don't want to get rid of Corbyn
[00:04:56] but you don't get rid of Corbyn by coming by coming to Corbyn's opposition which is you know people it's hard enough to avoid the criticism from the left that that's what you're doing
[00:05:07] without actually bloody well lifting a line from a Tory Prime Minister and making it a piece of Labour Party propaganda. Exactly, well it's just like we are it's like we'll move off the Labour Party very quickly
[00:05:18] but it really are they put they are playing that we were really just the Tory government it's just we're not safe pair of hands. We're just not Rishi Sunak that's all and so they run scared of... We're taller than Rishi. We're taller.
[00:05:32] Somebody that short in front of the podium outside channel number 10 do you? Let's not get into criticizing physical assets because otherwise you can go after me and I wouldn't want that to happen.
[00:05:44] I mean yeah they are playing it safe and I get the Greens don't have to do that and interestingly I mean the one thing the Greens have been honest about is that it's things cost a lot of money
[00:05:56] so to fix up the health service will cost a fortune tens of billions to bring back all the utilities that they want to renationalize like water, electricity along with the railways
[00:06:12] all of that's gonna cost money and so how are they gonna do that they're gonna tax the wealthy I mean they've said that Labour would not dare to say that I mean it's clear that they want to raise capital gains tax
[00:06:25] and you know and why not? Why the hell not because it was Margaret Thatcher her government that said you know that you should be paying the same tax whether it's earned income or unearned income. So it's hardly a socialist policy it was a you know
[00:06:41] a staunchly conservative policy back in the Thatcher era but they're saying yeah we've got to tax the wealthy the wealthy more. Labour don't even go there I mean we know that they're gonna do it
[00:06:51] but they don't even talk about it. Yeah yeah but as you say it's the Greens policy which is the most disappointing because if you know your maximum number I think the maximum number of seats that they hunt to get is about four
[00:07:03] you know and I go well if you lost a seat courtesy of being you know pushing your envelope further whoopee do you've gone from four to three you've still got representation in parliament
[00:07:14] so it shows I was involved I was talking to I was talking to Natalie Bennett quite a bit when I was working at Kingston and I've spoken at Green Conferences and so on. So they're aware of the modern monetary theory argument
[00:07:30] and the one that I support as well though I'm not strictly MMT as people keep on telling me from MMT that's let's buy the buy. Well you're MMT light I mean you question. Maybe MMT heavy let's wait and see
[00:07:45] but anyway they're MMT lush but what gets out of it the government creates money by deciding to create money it's not a case that it has to borrow the damn stuff and the Greens could take that position
[00:07:59] and then say okay we're going to tax the wealthy for income distributional issues we're going to maybe look at ways that we can improve the taxation system so the rich kind of aid taxes like they do right now
[00:08:12] that sort of thing and then they can say well the government creates money it's currently creating it for Trident missiles and other you know useful things for the people I want to play with big toys but it's not created for national health and for education and essential services
[00:08:29] we're going to create it for those things and cut and we're going to and if we do any reduction it'll be as a decision about these the structure of government spending it won't be because we don't have the money so they could they should be pushing that
[00:08:43] and pushing a carbon tax I mean this is again why I think it's rather a gulless manifesto because the whole idea of a carbon tax is to gradually nudge the capitalist system away from carbon carbon based energy forms towards non-carbon based and the market will solve it
[00:09:03] well I'm sorry the day for the market to solve it into at least 20 years ago It's too slow, yeah yeah well let's talk about that I want to talk about that after the break
[00:09:11] just this idea first of all I want to explore a bit more I mean we've spoken about it I'm an Aussie and but I always have more questions to ask about this idea about creating money
[00:09:19] and we've a few episodes ago we talked about well how much can you create or how much should you create how much extra what's the minimum and we you know we talked about how it related to what you expect your GDP to be
[00:09:31] if you're going to have growth you've got to have more money put into the economy so it's got to be in line with that if it gets too out of kilter with that
[00:09:38] if you create way too much money then it will create inflation we've talked about that as well the other side is that you're going to take an enormous amount of money and an enormous amount of physical resources that money can harness to address climate change properly
[00:09:51] yeah and that's what they're not talking about yeah well and just on the inflation thing because that's the first thing people are going to say if the Greens would say well look we're going to get the government to create a great deal of money
[00:10:00] the first thing people will say is but that's going to create inflation but and I touched on this last week or the week before about you know well some things will be inflationary and some won't won't they
[00:10:10] so if you if the government spent billions on Trident for example which we don't want them to do but if they did that with money that they created well that's not inflationary is it because it's just creating more missiles
[00:10:24] it has nothing to do with money circulating the economy they created it okay there's people involved in jobs making Trident but it's not inflationary because we don't sell Trident it's you know it's outside the money system
[00:10:38] how does that how does inflation impact stuff like that and then so similarly if you're funding the health service for something that you provide free how is that inflationary if you create the money for that
[00:10:48] exactly I mean what it's going to hit is the buying power of the people who are involved in providing the service the government has enabled by creating the money in the first place yeah and in the case of you if you financing Trident
[00:11:00] then a small number of arms manufacturers do very well and I didn't notice arms manufacturers in the queue at Sainsbury's last time I was there where if you if you find out people in the National Health Service
[00:11:12] then doctors and nurses go shopping at Sainsbury's so in terms of a stimulus for the economy which is one issue that the spending on NHS will have more of an impact than spending on Trident will have
[00:11:23] but the other thing is you know the best use of Trident will be that it never leaves the bloody port the best use of the NHS as everybody goes there and gets treated for their health issues
[00:11:33] and at the moment the impact we're having upon you know the supply side of the economy in that sense for people having this weird old disease that nobody's ever heard of before called Covid which nobody's measuring so it can't possibly be happening it's gone now
[00:11:48] that's gone now but it also is mysteriously about 10% of the NHS staff are down with some mysterious disease on a rolling basis and what you've got is you know you get doctors being underpaid
[00:11:59] I mean I can't believe the rate of the pay rate that gets the doctors get in the in the UK I remember discussing with a woman whose brother was a doctor and I basically assumed they got a similar income level to Australia
[00:12:11] and I was shocked to hear they were learning about half what I was getting as being head of school at Kingston and that itself I thought was a challenge to live on in London let alone half that
[00:12:23] so what you've got is a system which is discouraging anybody to sign up for it in the first place pay the doctors better wages, pay the nurses better wages all these things are feasible but the Greens don't seem to be talking about that
[00:12:35] they seem to be confined by the same let's not disturb the conventional wisdom boat the Labour Party is abyssalately shouting from the rafters they seem to be saying at nibble nibble nibble in the manifesto but there's nothing radical about that manifesto
[00:12:52] and there's nothing grounded in understanding how money is created or understanding the seriousness of the climate plight we face when I imagine there's quite a few people now certainly on the latter issue who are worried enough to say yeah we've got to go beyond carbon taxes
[00:13:10] but that's not mentioned by the manifesto unless I manage to mention that particular piece of 25 point type so the idea of paying doctors and nurses more in fact the public sector more and then providing more support for local government as well
[00:13:29] out of money that might have been created by the government with you know the inflationary impacts would be sort of like secondary based on the spending of the people who are earning the money would add to your leveling up agenda wouldn't it
[00:13:46] because doctors and nurses strangely are all over the place where people are local councils are all over the place actually if you wanted to inject money into these local economies rather than it seems to be conventional wisdom this idea of growth polls
[00:13:59] we'll put money into a particular councils and that's going to help that region to grow again that's going back to an idea of the Thatcher era rather better isn't it to actually just give money to people
[00:14:12] so that they can spend it and then watch the local economy grow from that absolutely and this is what people say that you don't want to go to my bureaucrat deciding the spending agreed give it to the local doctor I mean and the whole idea
[00:14:25] I mean we can if anybody wants to argue the privatise is better than public on that front just take a good look at America's data the world's most expensive health system with the worst performance in terms of health and life expectancy so there's no and everybody
[00:14:46] you'd have to be an absolute moron or a member of the Tory party to go for the argument that privatise is better than public on the ideology because this ideology has been tried, tested and failed and so the Greens should be coming out saying
[00:15:01] we're going to provide the state we're going to increase wages for nurses and doctors we're going to increase wages for university staff we're going to give students free education and they can spend the money into the economy and we know that these particular ways of providing services
[00:15:16] are better than doing it through the private sector so there should be that level of courage the one thing I can excuse the Greens for in this manifesto is they didn't have much notice maybe that's part of it you've got six weeks before the bloody election
[00:15:30] you don't have time to negotiate new ideas well they said they were more prepared than anybody else actually they can use that argument they made the point they're actually fielding more people more candidates at this election than the Tory party is
[00:15:43] and they did say you would have thought the Tory party actually would have had more advance warning than we have and yet they're not getting as many candidates out so yeah it's interesting how Nigel Farage is gaining with his reform party
[00:15:58] and they, even though Nigel Farage is openly admitted now in one of the debates the National Health Service will never be funded adequately he says the only way is for a partial privatisation so that the wealthy pay
[00:16:10] and then it's there just as a stopgap measure for everybody else so that it's out in the open and yet which for most people in Britain I actually sort of agree with him but for most people in Britain the National Health Service is an institution
[00:16:25] it shouldn't be messed with and yet here he is garnering support despite that I think that gets back to the whole point that people really don't listen they just read the headlines anything smaller than 24 point type is lost in the detail possibly I mean at the same time
[00:16:41] he may be getting a reward for sticking his neck out and saying something that is not conventional wisdom which will launch part of the electorate's supports and that's what if the Greens say they had the time then surely they would know that amongst their own membership
[00:16:53] there would be higher support for the idea that the government creates money to spend and that the market system won't get us there in time and that we need to boost the national health and we need to improve the quality of university and school education
[00:17:07] and we need school libraries, I mean we need libraries which I think you've got to have seen that one of the many progressive members of the Labor Party who's been turned down as a member of the Labor Party team I've forgotten her name but
[00:17:19] a woman who used to work for the National Economic Foundation has a PhD in economics as a non-orthodox person in that whole realm and she's been shut down by the Labor Party so she can't campaign for something she agreed, a tweet she agreed to
[00:17:35] about eight bloody years ago now she was saying one of her very good promotional videos showing that her local library was under threat and that's something like about 800 local libraries being shut down by lack of funding so that's the obvious you provide that stuff
[00:17:53] again this is the case where it's not profitable to provide private libraries in poor areas so what you get out of that is the hoteling effect, the rich get libraries the poor don't and you get Hurray Henry's becoming your Prime Minister and your Treasurer rather than people from
[00:18:09] a working glass background but that's again a major reason to say these things should be publicly funded and we're going to create their money for it and again non-inflationary because what's the price you pay for your local community library zero that's what its price should be Yeah exactly
[00:18:25] so round our way they are keeping it open but they're just getting rid of the people having unmanned libraries that seems to be and yet you know part of the it's part of the charm and then there's got to be bits of
[00:18:37] it's part of the charm, speaking as an Ex-Gore librarian yes and speaking as a person with several friends who were librarians and then the best librarians are the ones who you can actually walk up to and the librarian never gets time to read the books but knows what
[00:18:51] they damn well are they're an old yeah the people actually can use Google and say Google will give you 100 answers and the librarian will give you two and the two will be better filtered than the 100 from Google Yeah exactly and I used to
[00:19:07] in our local library I used to enjoy going into what share old people being taught how to use computers by people who were almost as old as they were it was literally the blind leading the blind I think so
[00:19:19] but I'm using to watch but now I'm a monk now I'm amongst the blind or the old so not the blind but the old so yeah maybe I shouldn't criticize age too much so the greens are saying though that you know they will tax the wealthy
[00:19:35] a wealth tax of 1% annually on assets over 10 million pounds and 2% on assets over 1 billion pounds good idea, bad idea 1 million what were those numbers again 1% on assets over 1 million and so presumably annually this is so if you've got a 10 million dollar house you're going to pay 100,000 a year
[00:19:59] in tax on it and 2% on assets over a billion so I don't know is that a good idea that's a radical one Steve is a radical one I mean I'm actually a bit worried about the 1% on 10 million because even though
[00:20:15] most of those people are going to be voting Tory that is still a substantial proportion of the population is going to have assets worth more than 10 million I mean if you have a house in Surrey in some cases you're going to be up
[00:20:27] at that level so the housing bubble itself that might be I'd rather make it say 20 or maybe 50 million as they're the only one should get to 50 million down at the point 0, 1% of the population are you getting close to 10 million Steve's that way of saying this
[00:20:45] I'm lucky I might max out at 1 but the point is that you don't want to give something which this is partly where the conservatism in politics comes from each party doesn't want to give the other party something that they can scare their constituency with so if you had
[00:21:03] you know it would be saying 1% on 10 million I'm sure that's going to be picked up by the Tories in an area where the Greens are running if you say 1% on 50 million anybody picks it up and thinks they can run with it as an electoral campaign is in trouble
[00:21:17] but here's the thing even if you're on that 10 million to have a house that's worth 10 million 100,000 so it's a chunk of money that you could be spending in other ways but if it was pitched to you look you know you're wealthy you've got a big house
[00:21:31] we're going to charge you 100,000 a year you can afford it if you can't afford it sell the house but the money it doesn't come down to the cash flow you've got well yeah okay cash flow improves by 10 million if you sell the house so you've got 100,000
[00:21:45] we're going to take from you every year and we're going to use that to help save the planet how does that sound keep your house save the planet or sell your house downgrade and don't help save the planet you know take your pick I still think that's one
[00:21:59] if I was actually deciding the numbers inside the Greens I would have pitched it higher than 10 alright it's just near enough because a lot of people the idea is right sister we were just talking about the numbers are wrong there and then the other thing is
[00:22:11] they want to reform capital gains tax so they want to go back to that the idea of market thatcher that radical that actually you know you should be taxed the same whether it's income, whether it's earned or unend income and that's just a no brainer isn't it
[00:22:25] really it is and it's something you want to have less financial speculation so the idea of taxes in the financial sector that reduce the extent to which people put their money into the financial sector would be a damn good idea right we're going to talk
[00:22:39] now we're going to talk to you when we come back and that carbon tax we're a bit late taking a break so we'll take it quickly now it's the debunking economics podcast me and Steve Keane the green manifesto for the UK election if you're listening Greens
[00:22:53] not radical enough must try harder back in just a second this is the debunking economics podcast with Steve Keane and Phil Dobby okay we are looking at the UK election again I promise this is going to be the last time because we're getting very close to it now
[00:23:12] but you know it's a once every five year event it is a monumental shift happening in the UK and so it is worth talking about because you know it feels like it's a missed opportunity the biggest missed opportunity is the Greens manifesto which is what we're
[00:23:26] looking at this week so let's look at what they want to do in terms of the environment and in terms of energy so they want to introduce a carbon tax on all fossil fuel imports and domestic extraction based on greenhouse gas emissions produced
[00:23:42] when fuel is burned that's what they're saying so you don't like the idea of a carbon tax and you've already touched on it today saying well one of the reasons is it's just trying to create it's too slow basically because we're trying
[00:23:56] to use the market to solve a problem which needs to be fixed faster than that yeah that's the main issue but it helps to make oil more expensive and then reduce the consumption of it and maybe encourage energy producers using different systems to become more competitive
[00:24:14] in the marketplace you put your hand on that because you know the market itself hasn't increased the price of oil to reflect the social cost of oil which is the whole idea of the so called social cost of carbon but that's one of the greatest furfies
[00:24:28] in a whole climate change debate this is what Nordhaus has always pushed for let's get the market price right and the market will solve it that was maybe true 50 years ago when another economist I think his name was Nordhaus managed to derail the limits to growth arguments
[00:24:46] when if we started doing it 50 years ago we could have got the market systems a nudge in that direction it's too late courtesy of another little economist I think his name is Nordhaus who's managed to prevent us doing anything for 50 years so you know what the greens
[00:25:00] are doing is in fact endorsing what has been a catastrophic failure in analysis of climate change and I would that's the part that I find disappointing those Nordhaus brothers have got a lot and they all look the same don't they well actually once there were different
[00:25:16] ages I think one was about 30 and the other is about 70 and then the other the ladies was about 75 I think yeah so really it's been passed down the family uncanny resemblance uncanny resemblance but for Christ's sake why are you adopting that shit I mean
[00:25:32] pardon me the greens but you know and wish Natalie Belland I was still having shots with her but it is as you say it's something which if you can push the seriousness of the situation we're in now's a time to do it but the labour party and certainly
[00:25:46] the Tories are basically saying it's a trivial thing we don't want to harm the economy to try to do a bit of work from the climate when it's mainly the thought of those nasty Chinese and Indians that we've got carbon dioxide going into atmosphere today ignoring the
[00:26:00] contribution England made since since the steam engine was invented in a little place called Scotland from memory so yes you should be saying that it is a far bigger problem than that and pushing that line and this is an opportunity to get those ideas into the hand
[00:26:16] of the public through the manifesto which is a distribution system that only exists during election periods and it hasn't been taken by them and the issue is as well I mean maybe you have access to information about how much carbon is created by domestic producers it's pretty hard
[00:26:34] for you to do it for stuff that is imported I mean just how do you know in reality you know the paper that the oil is not imported in that sense and the coal is not mined locally so there are some that used to be of course
[00:26:48] but not anymore if you're just introducing that carbon tax just on the fossil fuel then what about the incentive is if you're pushing up the cost of stuff which has been created using fossil fuel domestically then the incentive is greater obviously to get stuff produced overseas where
[00:27:06] fossil fuels are used because you're not paying any tax on that yeah I mean it's again it hasn't been thought through and the only thing is we're picking up the conventional argument so what you've got I mean it reminds me of I've forgotten that there was Lord Heseltine
[00:27:26] who has asked this question and saying you know will you be happy when you have a conservative government in power and he said no I'd be happy and we've got two conservative parties vying for power well it looks like we've got two and a half parties vying for
[00:27:40] conservative parties vying for power the Greens radicalism is only a tiny step removed from the conservatism of the labor and Tory and they should say that's it's a missed opportunity at a time when you could actually get people who are becoming more and more dissatisfied
[00:27:56] with their conventional wisdom to jump ships well the sad thing is that they are saying on the one hand look we want to spend a great deal to fix the national health service and do all sorts of other stuff that needs to fix broken Britain because Britain
[00:28:10] is you know quite severely broken now and it's like just as a for example I got my car serviced and was told oh yeah you need new tyres I said we got tyres nine months ago and they said yeah yeah no but they're they're badly cracked
[00:28:26] and they said no one has worn out tyres anymore everyone has pothole damage so it's costing us a fortune and you know and loads of wasted rubber because the government is not investing in fixing up the roads so that you know
[00:28:42] there's all that sort of stuff that's going on it's just and it's going to cost billions upon billions upon billions to fix Britain to get the health service working to get the roads working to get public transport working to get the literally the shit out of the water
[00:28:56] and literally and the Greens are saying well okay we want to and I don't know why Labour aren't saying this perhaps it's a bit too Jeremy Corbyn and I mean Labour is saying we're going to renationalise the railways why in you know
[00:29:10] why the hell aren't they saying we're also going to renationalise all those utilities that are not working in particular water it's a no brainer you wouldn't lose you know a hardened Tory supporter I think would say yes well that particular privatisation hasn't worked
[00:29:24] so got no problem with that the Greens saying that as well but all of this they're saying is going to cost money and they're funding it they're saying that we are fully costed like everybody else is saying so they and this is how they're
[00:29:36] going to raise the money and this is where it just doesn't make sense they're saying they would additional a carbon tax so that's a chunk of how they're going to fund it through a carbon tax but if the carbon taxes working surely shouldn't be raising any money
[00:29:54] it's like a tax on smoking you know if you introduce a tax on smoking stop people smoking and you know if you're going to raise the money and you know you're going to raise the money and you're going to raise the money
[00:30:08] and you're going to raise the money and introduce a tax on smoking stop people smoking ultimately if no one smokes again yeah exactly so wouldn't be the same with carbon tax exactly so it again it's not thought through and this
[00:30:22] is the problem the whole conventional way of thinking doesn't realise that you know government spending actually creates part of GDP taxation reduces it so if you're doing this sort of stuff and you know you say your objective is to have zero revenue but you're relying upon
[00:30:36] getting 80 billion in revenue really 80 billion revenue you know you're allowing too much carbon to be burned into the atmosphere so again it's not systemic thinking we're going to balance our books as long as our policies don't work that's in effect what there's like
[00:30:52] adding the process we're screwing the planet because everyone's going to keep on trucking carbon into the air we're just making money from it to fix everything else you were thinking hang on aren't you the Green Party so the other way then and this isn't such
[00:31:06] a radical idea in that it's been talked about we've talked about it on the podcast but we're not unique in that is that you say well okay we're going to give you carbon credits rather than trying to tax the companies we say to every individual
[00:31:18] you know we're at age where this is possible now just needs to be a mobile phone app really that you've got so many thousand carbon credits you buy something it's got whatever the price is but it's also got a carbon price attached to it and you
[00:31:34] pay for it with cash and carbon credits that's exactly why aren't they talking about that and I don't know I think a blood called Steve Keen has been involved coming up with an idea like that actually working with a guy called Adam Hardy who's established
[00:31:48] a website called eco core dot org so we put that proposal forward that would be a radical proposal because one of the greatest advantages of the carbon tax which is that means you're saying we're going to take more money out of your pocket isn't that
[00:32:02] a good idea why don't you smile why aren't you smiling and that's what actually brought Macron on Don if you might remember with the yellow the yellow yellow vest he put up the price he put up the price of diesel
[00:32:16] on the argument that was you know part of the European Union's climate policy but in fact it was to help balance his budget that was the main reason it was being done put up the price more money in for the budget and bang you hit
[00:32:28] the 3% limit on the Maastricht Treaty what that meant was the working class revolved because the working class are the ones who buy petrol like the wealthy in Paris they're sensible bicycle everywhere and live a short distance from work it's the people in the countryside
[00:32:44] who have to drive to get to work and have to use diesel and the diesel will use overwhelmingly working class so the idea of the carbon credit on the other hand is everybody gets an equivalent carbon credit you've got to buy by everything you want to buy
[00:33:00] with both money and the carbon credit the poor if you set it at the average for the country because 90 to 95% of the population can see it as below the average they would actually get carbon credit they could sell to the wealthy
[00:33:14] whereas the rich would have to pay it to buy the carbon credits off the poor it's the only income distribution scheme of ever thought of that works this could work but in the year you reduced the number of carbon credits so the carbon consumption
[00:33:32] would go down that differential would be greater in fact wouldn't it because you'd assume that the price of each carbon credit would trade at a higher price as the resource became more constrained and so rich people who are the big consumers would find
[00:33:46] every year it's getting more expensive to use carbon so they use less and so long as they don't do that the poor are getting richer at the same time as well and this thing you could float this during an election campaign you expect to lose anyway yeah
[00:34:02] the opportunity lost isn't it absolutely the opportunity lost if they'd gone out with just that and said by the way we also want to do the obvious stuff which is re-nationalizing all the utilities then yeah at least they would be in a conversation
[00:34:16] rather than this everything's fully costed so the other thing just very quickly because you're out of time they also say it weighs out nuclear energy which is unsafe and much more expensive than renewables is that a good idea I want to get replacements
[00:34:30] for fossil fuels as fast as possible in that sense the fastest way not necessarily the sustainable way but the fastest ways to expand solar and wind and tide systems and thermal for that matter geoengineering for thermal energy up from the ground so they're the fastest ones
[00:34:48] but nuclear the newest technologies in terms of the type of technology so the old reactors you had to make a solid core somebody sent me an objection to nuclear power saying and then they've got to create it in a fuel rods well we haven't yet built
[00:35:02] the technology and this is one reason why I'm skeptical about the nuclear you've got actually have the stuff coming out of factories before I take it seriously but the new technologies based on either water reactors where the waters are moderated as well and also
[00:35:18] the new ones again which are using sodium and you've got you've got the nuclear power is actually in the salt it's liquid it's not in cause at all and you don't have carbon rods blah blah blah all that stuff is inherently safer and the arguments are
[00:35:34] that because you have so much more safety you don't need the incredible high regulatory costs and you don't have to have everyone being specifically tailored for the region in which it's based what about this? because I mean renewables the argument against renewables
[00:35:50] is always yeah well yeah but two points to this one is the argument against renewables is always that you know what about the base load you know that we always need some sort of continual supply which is not dependent on wind or sun or whatever
[00:36:04] and nuclear might be able to do that but it takes a long time 8 to 10 years to build a nuclear power plant and that's why you want to be a big thing is if we had nuclear power plants being produced in the fashion that I think it's called
[00:36:16] Copenhagen atomic wants to do then where you actually make them in factories and ship them out on site and just install them on site you would have the order of magnitude drop in the cost that potentially order of magnitude cost drop
[00:36:30] in the cost and I just noticed Bill Gates is actually touting a new system it was called news stream or some title of that nature where 384 megawatt power station can be built far more rapidly far more cheaply using the sodium assault technology rather than the old
[00:36:54] fuel rod stuff so what the greens are doing is basically objecting to 30 year old technology and we don't have the modern stuff because we've had such opposition to nuclear power over time but this is the main point that I take from my
[00:37:10] the nuclear advocates in my support base is that if we had put the investment into nuclear 30 and 40 years ago we would now have the technology that would mean we would have far safer and far cheaper nuclear power so partly the opposition of the greens
[00:37:28] and I have to say that I shared this opposition 30 or 40 years ago that opposition has actually slowed down creating an approach to nuclear power and we don't have the issues that we would be complained about so a lack of investment in that area is something which you can
[00:37:46] slate back to the opposition that progressive groups had to nuclear power back in the 60s and 70s when they weren't aware that the biggest danger in terms of energy production is not nuclear but fossil burning carbon dioxide. So I feel just you know final point
[00:38:02] and you feel free to add to this that the greens you know we are going to fix up Britain we're going to manage wealth inequality and sure we'll do all that you know looking after the planet stuff we expect from the greens
[00:38:18] but that should be the number one thing and it feels like it's almost in second or third place beyond these you know the other issues that this election is being fought on surely they should just ignore all those and go you can argue about that but the green
[00:38:38] is going to be fixed but look over here the planet is really suffering and we need to put that back as number one on the agenda we're going to do that because we're the greens they don't seem to be doing that no that's the feeling of the document
[00:38:52] is that that's you know a nice thing we're going to do on the side and the main thing we're going to do is increase taxes and fix the budget they're not quite as well-framing and therefore they haven't proposed a range of things
[00:39:06] which you could associate with the greens you can expect you could accept that part of that would alienate parts of the electorate you're highly unlikely to get to vote for you anyway but you might find people are walking around you know rumbling as you and I do
[00:39:18] about the ignorance of the political parties about the monetary system there may be enough of those people that they actually gain votes for putting this idea forward rather than lose them yeah they should at least be saying well this is an opportunity to add to the public discussion
[00:39:32] rather than just being another voice following conventional wisdom if wisdom's the right word opportunity lost it seems anyway we talked about it here at the very least good to talk Steve catch you next week that's good mate the debunking economics podcast if you've enjoyed listening to debunking economics
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