Social Security and Global Warming

I am reminded of the Italian health problem.

An Italian newborn will be nationless by the time he mounts his first government cardiac stress machine. Why? Because the cost of national health care falls on young families who give up children to support it.

However, global warming is not the issue to be assigning probabilities of a disaster. Damage will be done, small or large.

I am not sure what a climate catastrophe is. We regularly abandon cities due to weather, and migrate onward. We adapt. Like social security, the problem will always be 40 years away because we adapt as time goes on. I mean, it is hotter than hell in Mexico, and anyone who needs to escape the heat need just move north. But we do not hear global warming as a partial cause of migration, because on a year to year basis temperature does not rise that much. However, eventually Mexico will be depopulated and hot as hell; but the migration and population decline came increment by increment, and the damage incremental.

However low the probability of sudden catastrophe; it remains that damage done must be assigned to the fossil fuel industry and paid out to damaged parties.

You have confused Mark and this Angrybear with your "painless" solution. Are you saying there's some free lunch. Mark and I both suggest why this is not the case - and it goes to the most basic premise of savings (foregoing consumption) and capital accumulation. Either your terminology was ill founded or you have revolutionized how we think about these issues? Please clarify.

Arnold - thanks for the comment over at Angrybear. But I'm still at a loss to figure out what you are saying for reasons I noted over there, but I'll repeat here. You seem to be saying households are not saving enough and to get them to do so would require some change in public policy. I find this to be a strange argument coming from a conservative. What is the market failure here and what change in public policy are you recommending?

I have another comment at the Angry Bear web site. I hope it helps clarify my position.

Arnold,

Very persuasive post. Of course, it's easy to be persuasive when you take a position where the facts and arguments are so overwhelmingly on your side. You're just going for the easy take-downs.

"and the cost of acting now on carbon dioxide emissions is huge (at least for the reductions allegedly needed)."

Is it, though? The research I've seen suggests that by raising carbon taxes and lowering income taxes, there can, in some cases, be a net economic gain, not a loss. See McKittrick (1998).

I discuss this more on the About site. Click on my name for details.

Arnold,

Well, you are a bit unclear about how it is that one "fixes" social security now, therefore it is a bit vague to say that is it painless today. The plan that Bush pushed (although it was never officially pushed) involved at least one age group taking a pretty bad hit, sort of end-of-baby boomers-front-end-Gen-Xers, if I remember correctly. They did not get grandfathered in fully into the old system and had substantial cuts in their benefits, but did not have enough time in grade to get much out of the privatizatized accounts. Of course their pain would have been sometime in the future.

Likewise, the recent flurry of talk about a bipartisan deal, apparently now dead since Cheney and Norquist killed any talk of a tax increase, involved cuts in pretty distant future benefits, although it was not posed that way. Again, as long as one did not raise taxes now, the pain would be sometime off in the future.

So, again, what do you mean by "painless now"?

And, of course, I am already on record here as being optimistic about the system's prospects: ain't broke, don't need no fixing.

Regarding climate change, I think I am increasingly in the Nordhaus camp. At least he did his discounting right: start with about 3% and then lower it as one goes out into longer time horizons down to 1% by 200 years out, although I am of the view that we have no idea what will be going on 200 years from now.