Daily Archives: May 18, 2017

Mr Jodian Rodgers, Money Free Party Resources Shared Equitably candidate for Bristol West in 2017 general election.

Age: 39

Where do you live? Staple Hill

How long have you lived there? 5 years

Where did you live previously? London

What do you do for a living? I manage PAWS a pets and wildlife sanctuary charity shop

Political career: First campaign

What other interests do you have? If time permitted I would dance every night. I love to read and enjoy sports when I can. I follow science and technology closely. Since learning of a Resource Based Economy, visit http://www.thevenusproject.com for information, my focus has remained on this subject and how to spread the idea.

Why do you want to be elected as an MP? It is now clear that the present political system cannot be fixed. It is perfectly designed to benefit the few.

We live in a world where Eight billionaires own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who form the poorest half of the world's population (Oxfam briefing paper Jan 2017 An economy for the 99%). It is time for us to rewrite the social.

Whilst introducing RBE to the UK, Parliament and Bristol West, I would challenge injustice and campaign for clean energy. Would work to eliminate homelessness and food banks with community based sustainable projects and call for renters rights. Tackle education budget cuts and help make education and skills relevant to todays challenges

Why do you think you would be a success at the job? Because I estimate I have sixty plus years left in my lifetime and I will not stop promoting and working towards a Resource Based Economy.

I can focus on nothing else but achieving a RBE environment and replace the injustice of the present system of governance. This passion for helping all of Bristol West will always keep me focused on the goal of equality for all.

What would your main aims be during your term of office? Introducing the concept of the Resource Based Economy, end homelessness and food banks replaced with community and self sustainability projects, Tackle education budget cuts and help make education and skills relevant to todays challenges, achieve renters rights, support the community of Bristol West in the best possible way I can, and work for every one of my constituents to achieve justice.

What would you like to say to voters? The current political system is perfectly designed to enrich a few, we can't fix it, as it is profit before environment and people. It is killing the Earth. Its time to explore new models. A Resource Based Economy would end the use of money, trade, barter, credit or servitude and declare all resources as the common heritage of all peoples.

All work would be voluntary, with automation to replace as much work as technological possible freeing us for problem solving and creative work and to explore the world around us the incentive would be an end to war, poverty, politics, leaders and government. Replaced by a participatory competent democracy, where all are invited to join in with decisions providing they have knowledge or experience in the subject area of the decision.

Relevant education would be available for any age, so can take part in whatever you choose. In Bristol our education and skills training has not been relative and now with on average 677 less being spent per pupil we find ourselves with a massive skills shortage, this has been a deliberate policy, to what end! When elected MP I would call for a forensic audit of the entire budget for Bristol West to find waste and then move these monies to where they are needed. And I would appreciate your vote on June 8th.

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Jodian Rodgers - Money Free Party candidate for Bristol West in general election 2017 - Bristol Post

State must promote local resource-based branches having great export potential, says President of Armenai

YEREVAN, MAY 18, ARMENPRESS. Armenia must be the most favorable and safe country for all Armenians to live and express themselves. Every citizen must have his participation in the process of becoming such by forming a strong and fair state, President Serzh Sargsyan said in his speech at the first session of the newly elected Parliament.

For achieving our goal, implementing and designing economic policy aimed at ensuring sustainable long term economic growth has important significance. Moreover, combined monetary and fiscal policies must create such a dynamic and stable macroeconomic environment, which will enable to reach both short-term and medium and long term stable economic growth, by ensuring the target indicators for 2040, he said.

According to the President, it is necessary for the average annual pace of economic growth to be significantly higher than average international economic growth paces, in order for the per capita GDP indicator difference between Armenia and developed countries to be gradually reduced.

Particularly, in 1990-2015 Armenias GDP has reached 10 billion 529 million dollars from 2 billion 257 million dollars, growing nearly 4,7 times. In 2016-2040, we must also provide an annual average 5 percent GDP growth and reach more than 57-50 billion dollars GDP indicator providing over 5 and a half times growth.

GDP per capita is planned to be reached over 15000 USD from the 2015 3500 USD in 2040, taking into account both the growth pace and the planned improvements of the demographic situation.

Taking into account Armenias peculiarities and the current economic situation, the state must also have proactive involvement in the economy, according to the President.

The state must encourage and promote especially competitive sectors, sectors having great export potential and mostly those which are based on local resources, and why not specific program development and implementation.

Particularly, we have achieved significant successes in the state-private sector cooperation in the infrastructure, namely water supply, air transportation sectors, however many branches of the economy are yet aside from the abovementioned favorable results of cooperation. Therefore it is necessary to implement specific targeted work in various branches of the economy for raising the accessibility of state-private sector partnership and enhancing opportunities of implementation, taking into account both international and Armenian experience, he said.

Sargsyan said it is necessary to continuously improve the business environment and eliminate business obstacles.

Our goal is to improve our ranking in the Doing Business statistics and reach the top 20 during the coming 4-5 years and have a stable position in the top 15 in the future. We need this very much. It is necessary to break the stereotype under which it is easier for Armenians to achieve success abroad. Yes, indeed, it is incomparably difficult for us to compete against one another, than against foreigners, but this must not be an obstacle for Armenias economic development, but rather a significant boosting force and a precondition. Imagine how difficult it will be for foreigners to compete with united Armenians. The key to success is for us to create the conditions and boost the sectors and development programs where the main competitors are in foreign markets, i.e. the production and services are predominantly aimed at exports, he said.

The President said promoting exports and increasing competitiveness will result in exports of products and services reaching up to 40-50% of GDP during the upcoming five years, and then by maintaining the same trend, it must reach 50-55 % of GDP in 2040.

Link:

State must promote local resource-based branches having great export potential, says President of Armenai - Armenpress.am

Ann Robinson, new Director of Economic Development at Community Development Partnership (CDP photo)

The Community Development Partnership (CDP), a non-profit organization creating opportunities for people to live, work and thrive on the Lower Cape, is pleased to announce that Ann Robinson has been hired as its Director of Economic Development. The Director of Economic Development is responsible for leading the organizations Economic Development department in planning, executing and evaluating strategic business and credit programs that have measurable impact in the community.

We are excited to have Ann and her extensive experience in small business development, lending and affordable housing at the CDP, said Jay Coburn, Executive Director of the CDP. As a long-time part-time resident of the Lower Cape, Ann understands the challenges we face in our seasonal, service based economy. And she brings a great depth of experience and new ideas to the CDP and the Lower Cape.

Ann Robinson has had an interest in affordable housing and community development all her adult life. Prior to joining the CDP, she served for 22 years as the Executive Director for Community Capital Fund, a community development financial institution located in Bridgeport, Connecticut. During her time with Community Capital Fund, Ann led the organizations work to provide loans to support affordable housing development, as well as the expansion of small businesses. Before then, Ann was the Executive Director of Bridgeport Neighborhood Trust, where she oversaw the development of rental and homeownership housing for low and moderate-income families. As the Executive Director of Bridgeport Neighborhood Housing and Commercial Services, her work was focused on residential rehabilitation projects for low and moderate income individuals.

Prior to entering the community development field, Ann spent 8 years in Westport, CT as an attorney in private practice specializing in litigation. Ann has an A.B. in government from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law.

Ann recently moved to Cape Cod full-time after owning a house in South Chatham for the past 10 years. She has vacationed in South Chatham since she was an infant, so the Cape has been her second home for a long time.

As the CDPs Director of Economic Development, Robinson will lead the organizations economic development efforts to strengthen business sectors with competitive regional advantage, especially traditional and renewable natural resource based industries. Current programs and services include:

1) Small Business Training & Technical Assistance workshops, trainings and one on one technical assistance for small businesses starting up or poised for growth.

2) Micro-loan program - three loan funds that provide working capital for small businesses, ground fishermen and shell fish farmers who are unable to access traditional sources of financing.

3) The Cape Cod Fisheries Trust - a collaborative program of the CDP and the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermans Alliance working to protect depleted fisheries resources, reinvigorate fishing businesses and revitalize coastal fishing communities on Cape Cod.

Robinson started full-time with the organization on May 15th 2017.

Read more:

CDP Hires Director of Economic Development - Cape Cod Today

Two Canadian economists, UBCs Kevin Milligan and Wilfrid Lauriers Tammy Schirle, have published a new working paper on a subject dear to my heart: the high use of disability insurance, particularly Social Security disability insurance, in the United States. At the end of March 2017, the monthly report from the U.S. Social Security Administration declared that the country has almost exactly 14 million people under the age of 65 receiving some sort of federal disability payment.

This figure includes spouses and dependents of disabled workers, and a few children receiving supplemental income on the grounds of their own disability. The number of actual workers judged to be no longer capable of work, and collecting on Social Security disability insurance earned during their careers, is listed as 8,778,000.

The overall working-age population of the U.S., ranging from ages 15 to 64, stands at about 205 million. So even if we generously leave teenagers in the denominator, thats about four per cent of the American working-age public on disabilityfrom one particular federal program (admittedly the dominant one). However, that quotient does not include any veterans with a service-related disability (there were close to four million of those in 2015), anybody on a state disability program, anybody in a workers compensation scheme, or anyone receiving private disability insurance.

About four per cent of the American working-age public is on disability. This is not normal.

This is not normal, as Milligan and Schirle point out in their paper. Since 1990, the rate at which Americans go on disability insurance under Social Security has increased by two-thirds for men. Over the same period, it tripled for women, as increasing female workforce participation made most of them eligible independent earners. They now become formally disabled at almost the same rate as men.

As dangerous industrial jobs disappear, life in almost every regard becomes vastly safer, and work itself becomes more disabled-friendly, the U.S. has nonetheless experienced a substantial increase in the disabled population, even while Social Security rolls have held steady for the past couple of years. These results contrast with other advanced welfare states, which are usually thought to be much more generous. The Canada Pension Plan disability benefit, for example, attracts workers at one-third the rate.

To my regular readers this will all sound like the set-up to one of those columns where I dig into the guts of a scholarly paper, pointing out surprises and possible pitfalls. To be honest, Milligan and Schirles articleis a little above my pay grade. (My eyes start to wobble out of focus at the sight of the phrase instrumental variables.) But I understand what the authors are trying to do, because its a classy quantitative version of a familiar newspaper columnist trick: they are applying the good old Canadian lens to a foreign issue.

The authors applythe good old Canadian lens to a foreign issue.

The paper is an effort to examine the heavy use of disability insurance in the U.S. workforce a clear outlier among OECD countries, as they put itby using Canada as a sort of statistical control. They have hog-strangling amounts of detailed micro-data on workers from both countries, and by using a lot of modelling tricks and assumptions I am not qualified to judge they use that data to guess what would happen to U.S. disability rates if the U.S. had our economy and our system of public disability benefits.

It is, as they put it, a question of push versus pull. Canadas more resource-based economy did well with high commodity prices during parts of the study period (1996-2016), while manufacturing regions of the U.S. suffered: struggling labour markets could have pushed more American workers onto disability. But Social Security also offers more generous income replacement than the CPP and the QPP do. Maybe public policy is pulling Americans onto disability.

One interesting wrinkle that Milligan and Schirle highlight is not really a result or a finding, but just part of their background research. Still, its something I didnt know, and that you probably dont, even if you are an American. The U.S. benefits formula is closely linked to a national average wage, rather than a median. In Canada, the comparable component in the equation is just a flat ratea number that increases automatically with inflation, blind and deaf to labour market changes.

If a small number of high earners are enjoying wage gains while everyone else stagnates, the average wage still goes up, and that makes disability insurance relatively more attractive.

This means that on the U.S. side, if a small number of high earners are enjoying wage gains while everyone else stagnates, the average wage still goes up, and that makes disability insurance relatively more attractive. The fat cats and technocrats insane high-end incomes trickle down, in a surprising way, directly to Americas most miserable. Perhaps this is a poorly understood way in which American income inequality feeds on itself. Gains among the one per cent end up causing workers at the bottom to drop out and assume a lifelong sick role, all encouraged by an equation.

The actual result of the study is a bit boring. The push and the pull turn out to be about equally important, with the pull of numerically high benefits dominating in the first half of the study period and the push of labour force misery more relevant in the second. Between them, the push and pull factors seem large enough to account for the 1996-2016 trend differences between Canada and the U.S.

But, since their paper is only explaining recent relative trends, it does not account for pre-existing differences in disability-insurance usage, or for the pretty obvious effects of the United States feebler screening criteria (established long before 1996) and its vast, growing kudzu of opportunistic lawyers and administrative disability courts. These are elements of the American disease that are not so easy to quantify.

See the original post:

Colby Cosh: How the 1% accidentally pushed so many Americans onto the disability dole (and why it didn't happen in ... - National Post