Economy featured

The Biophysical Tax Man Cometh

November 6, 2023

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

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens is the Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF) an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition. Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians and systems thinkers ISEOF assembles road-maps and off-ramps for how human societies can adapt to lower throughput lifestyles.

Nate holds a Masters Degree in Finance with Honors from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont. He teaches an Honors course, Reality 101, at the University of Minnesota.