(2019-10-16) Azhar Perez Bubbles GoldenAges And TechRevolutions

How do we exploit the technological revolution for green growth and global development? Celebrated economist, author, and scholar, Carlota Perez joins Azeem Azhar to discuss the nature of techno-economic paradigm shifts and current progress in the cycle of technological revolution.

She says:

• Capitalism adapts because the elite fear populism that rises from crash upon income inequality. So they create a new deal to share the wealth, which creates broad demand for the new technology (turning point → golden age).
• The post-WorldWar II real New Deal was the subsidy of home ownership (and consumer debt) to drive huge demand for consumer goods.
  • hmm I agree that Progress should include improvements in Standard Of Living, but is demand-pull without scientific/productivity progress sustainable? And in particular, was suburb sprawl and debt a good thing? Maybe it would have been a good thing for a decade, but we never stopped subsidizing it?
• End of Cheap Energy was good because it started process of de-materialization vs climate change.
• We should tax short-term financial transactions (92% tax on gain made in less than a day, 80% on gain in first month, 50% going out to a year...) to pay for UBI
• consumer-goods manufacturing jobs aren't coming back to the First World, we should be focusing on
  • high-tech (green) industrial goods to sell to Third World factories
  • intangibles like education (useful skills more than university degrees)
  • continuing dematerialization
  • improving sustainability (vs disposability) of what can't be de-materialized