Poor people of all colors are getting poorer and our communities are getting more toxic. There is a misconception that to grow our economy we will have to do business as usual, because cleaning up the environment, mitigating climate change is just too costly. Well, I say the business of poverty is just too expensive a bill for humanity to pay any longer.
Interpretation
Economic growth should not come at the cost of environmental neglect and social inequality.
Majora Carter's quote highlights the critical connection between economic health and environmental sustainability, emphasizing that societal neglect, particularly among impoverished communities, leads to greater long-term costs for humanity. She argues against the notion that prioritizing growth inevitably requires harming the environment, asserting that the consequences of poverty and environmental degradation are ultimately too burdensome for society to ignore.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, this quote can illustrate the interconnectedness of poverty and environmental issues.
Smart infrastructure can provide cost-saving ways for municipalities to handle both infrastructure and social needs. And we want to shift the systems that open the doors for people who were formerly tax burdens to become part of the tax base.
Environmental justice [means that] no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other.
One thing I noticed working in the Bronx is that leaders come in the craziest places. They don't always show up at community board meetings. Sometimes it's just the guys on the corner that the boys on the block respect.
Environmental justice, for those of you who may not be familiar with the term, goes something like this: no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other.
I personally think that gentrification happens long before you start seeing white people in formerly people-of-color neighborhoods. It starts happening when we start telling the young, hard-working, quote-unquote 'smart' kids that they need to measure success by how far they get away from our communities.
We need to work together to embrace and repair our land, repair our power systems, and repair ourselves. It's time to stop building the shopping malls, the prisons, the stadiums, and other tributes to all of our collective failures.
I've never believed protectionism of that kind will lead us anywhere. I think you can have certain specific rules for engaging with India.. for example, not allowing mineral resources to be taken out of the country.. but there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that when you open an economy you should do it in totality. Foreign investment adds a sense of competition; we should see this as a wake-up call to modernise and upgrade. Companies that do not will undoubtedly die.
How could economics not be behavioral? If it isn't behavioral, what the hell is it?
In financial terms, my sense is that the distribution of wealth, unequal as it is, is self-perpetuating, and, especially in a linked and accelerating world, the rich get ever more quickly richer while the poor get ever more speedily poorer.
Building new roads and bridges creates jobs. Growing our exports creates jobs. Reforming our outdated tax system and our broken immigration system creates jobs.
There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits.
Every dollar released from taxation that is spared or invested will help create a new job and a new salary.
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