Economy featured

The Biophysical Tax Man Cometh

By Nate Hagens, originally published by The Great Simplification

November 6, 2023

Paying tax

Recorded October 31 2023

Description

In this Frankly, Nate expands on our conventional definition of “taxes” to highlight nine other categories that will ‘tax’ our modern lifestyles. Traditionally, when we think of net and gross income, we only think of direct government taxes that subtract from what we take home. What are other taxes – resulting from our system’s ecology – which will factor into the way society can pay for the goods and services we’ve become used to? As converging global crises intensify and each add their own ‘tax’, can we learn to manage with a smaller “net “ resource balance sheet – and maintain our time, sanity, and humanity through the coming decades?

Show Notes

00:07 – Frankly on Franklys

02:17 – US adds 1 trillion in debt over the last 3 months and adding 1.5 trillion more

03:09 – US interest rates have been declining for decades

04:03 – Interest rate on new/used car is 10/14 percent

06:43 – Relocalization

06:55 – Comparative advantage

10:23 – Russell Stock Index

10:51 – AI wealth concentrating effect

11:31 – Global Heating increasing extreme weather events

12:31 – The U.S. has 50% of the world’s prescriptions, but 4% of the population

12:46 – U.S. life expectancy is declining

12:59 – 20% of GDP is healthcare

Teaser photo credit: By H. G Wells – The Outline of History (1920) p.199. Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc.., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17583156
Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens is the Executive Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF). Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians, and systems thinkers, ISEOF assembles roadmaps for understanding how human societies might adapt to lower-throughput lifestyles.

Nate hosts the podcast The Great Simplification, where he has conversations with experts in energy, ecology, government, technology, and the economy to provide a systemic view of the world around us.

After ten years in finance, Nate left Wall Street to study the interrelationships between energy, ecology, and economics—and the implications for human futures. He was the Managing Editor of The Oil Drum, one of the most respected websites for analysis and discussion of global energy supplies and implications of the upcoming energy transition.

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