#ecomics

You know that they say "History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes"? I expect the U.S. U.K. and Canada to try to pass a modern version of the Statute of Labourers 1351. Yes, the Year of our Lord 1351.

What happened in 1351? According to Wikipedia - "The Black Death, or Bubonic Plague killed more than one-third of the population of Europe and 30–40% of the population in Britain and caused a dramatic decrease in the supply of labour.”

Which in turn, " Lords suddenly faced a sharp increase in competition for workers to work for them. Labourers had increased bargaining power and commanded higher wages."

And, "The elite class lamented the sudden shift in economic power." It isn't that people don't want to work, is that laborers are realizing who the real income creators are.

As the era of cheap energy comes to an end, capitalist thinking is struggling to solve the huge problems facing humanity. So how do we respond?

Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN secretary general. The main reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s environmental resources and the shift to less efficient energy sources.

Climate change and species extinctions are accelerating even as societies are experiencing rising inequality, unemployment, slow economic growth, rising debt levels, and impotent governments. Contrary to the way policymakers usually think about these problems these are not really separate crises at all.

These crises are part of the same fundamental transition. The new era is characterised by inefficient fossil fuel production and escalating costs of climate change. Conventional capitalist economic thinking can no longer explain, predict or solve the workings of the global economy in this new age.