A From the Ground-Up Estimation of the Economy - Part 1 - Introduction and Clean Air

Black Lives Matter!

Stay safe - wash your hands, practice social distancing and wear a face mask in public, and follow informed medical advice - and be considerate towards those at risk or in situations of vulnerability (including economic) while the COVID-19 pandemic is a problem.

One of the main aspects of economics is how to create more jobs, and the media tend to be slavish over numbers, but not quality nor sustainability (especially environmental).

Personally, I would to see us talk about job-years, rather than just jobs. That would mean a construction project that creates 500 jobs for two years would create 1,000 job-years, but a project that created 100 permanent jobs would (assuming people work from 18 to 67) create 4,900 job-years. (Making an assumption about permanent jobs in terms of years makes the jobs comparable.)

I would also like to know how much greenhouse gas is generated for each job-year - it would be substantially higher for the construction jobs, even if indirect jobs were counted (which also apply to the permanent jobs).

Given that none of that is likely to happen (unless some activist with more time, energy and resources than myself decides to take it on - hint, hint to anyone in that category who may be reading this). I'd like to move on to something equally unrealistic: rethinking our job market from the ground up - which is something I have never read of, despite its fundamental importance. The lack of such analysis means, in my opinion, that all economics is tinkering around the edges and/or flawed.

So, starting from scratch with our survival needs:

 . . . air.

We can only go a few minutes without breathable air, so I'm going to count that as the first genuine need that must be considered.

And before you make snarky comments about air being free and freely available, the word to give particular note to is “breathable”. In other words, air pollution limits this. From the WHO (link below):

“New estimates in 2018 reveal that 9 out of 10 people breathe air containing high levels of pollutants. Both ambient (outdoor) and household (indoor) air pollution are responsible for about 7 million deaths globally per year”;

From the Wikipedia link below:

“Studies published in March 2019 indicated that the number may be around 8.8 million”.

There are many parts of the world where air pollution is, notwithstanding a temporary reprieve during the pandemic lockdown, terrible - I'm thinking particularly of some cities in India.

Here are a few links on that topic:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Air_pollution&oldid=971826068;
• https://www.who.int/westernpacific/health-topics/air-pollution;
• https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/pollution/ (note the link to the climate crisis);
• https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/air-pollution/index.cfm;
• https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution (older data [2017], shows air pollution as fourth on “numbers of death by risk factor”);
• https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/08/14/air-pollution-asian-honey-bees-harmful-study/3374325001/ (it's not only us at risk); and
• https://www.britannica.com/science/air-pollution.

So my first essential set of jobs is actually those required to monitor and understand pollution, identify sources and preventions/cures, and enforce those measures. Now, environmental protection authorities also cover other matters (which I will get to shortly), but as a check on numbers:

• my home state's EPA has 600 people (see here) for a population of 6.2 million people (see here), or ~ 1 per 10,000;
• the heavily industrialised and heavily polluted USA's EPA has, after #45's savagery, around 13,800 employees (see here) for a population of around 330 million (see here), or ~ 1 per 24,000.

I tried to look up the rates in what are probably better performed legislatures such as New Zealand and Sweden, but, in all the data and information I could find NOTHING on how many people work in their Environmental Authorities!

I then tried to look up the numbers of environmental related scientists, and had even less success.

I found a generic site saying the world had around 7 million scientists in 2019, which - for a world population of 7.7 billion in 2019 - is around 1 per 1,100 - but that is in all fields. This site said the USA was producing around 30,000 science and engineering doctorates each year (in 2010), but only 25% of them were employed, so 7,500 per 308 million or 1 per 174,000. That, however, would be increased by the number of graduate degree scientists.

On the basis of the above and the perceptions I've gained from life, I'm going to suggest that the EPA (or similar) needs at least 1 employee per 5,000 people in the broader population, and that needs to be supported by around 1 scientist per 2,500 people (or 40% of the total number of scientists).

Once everyone thinks of the circular economy and environmental issues automatically as a part of planning, and we heal the damage done until then (which will take decades, and possibly centuries), these numbers would probably reduce a little.

After air, our next environmental need is typically described as water, on the grounds that one can survive several days, maybe up to a week without water. That’s true, but if is homeless, it is possible to die of hypothermia overnight - and exposure to heatwave conditions can also be fatal in far less than a week. For that reason, I’m going to nominate shelter as our second survival need.

Shelter.

NOT living in a fancy mansion or something you you want to use to stick it to your neighbours. Our houses are grossly oversized and stupidly built, so I’m going to base this on what I think we genuinely need to live in, and, further, that those are houses are built using sustainability principles - which includes building them to last.

I’ll get into that in the next post of these that I do. Other posts will include:

• water (which will include wastewater treatment);
• food (consider how many people are fed by each farmer? That’s quite high, but we should also be using backyard growth of veggies as well for a whole range of reasons);
• we have to get food from the farm, so there will be some transport;
• we then have to get residue out - use on site composting for a lot, but there are also other wastes, so municipal solid waste collection;
• emotional needs - a very important, very valid, and very overlooked need;
• medical needs (I’ll be looking at numbers of medical staff for systems like the NHS in the UK, not incompetent and vicious set ups like the USA - and the pandemic has also shown that we need an emergency non-militarised medical emergency service, which is additional to the basic health care numbers);
• food for the soul, beginning with education (probably something 1 teacher per 15 students in primary and high school) but also including life long and non-job based training (and the only time this worked well was when we had the 1% training guarantee, so that will be one guide);
• governance - particularly including social security. I will assume we reduce the complexity and harm caused by the current abysmal mess by using UBI. I will include local defence in this (the 2% of GDP guide, incidentally, pre-dates #45); and
• then I will start getting into other jobs - with at least 2.5% of GDP spent on research and development.

The highest level is self actualisation. While achieving that is largely a personal responsibility, it is the responsibility of governments to make sure there are no impediments - such as poverty, or iniquitous opportunities.

Black Lives Matter!