PRESS RELEASE
Club of Rome Attack on New Silk Road Paradigm
Sept. 14, 2016 (EIRNS)—The Club of Rome presented its new book-length report One Percent Is Enough in Berlin yesterday, calling for a drastic change of economic and taxation policies, the main target being a maximum economic growth rate of 1%. (The German title is Ein Prozent ist Genug or "One Percent Is Enough;" but the English title by sleight of hand is Reinventing Prosperity!)
The Club’s general secretary and the book’s co-author, Graeme Maxton (U.K.), attacked the idea of growth as "neoliberalist brainwashing" that would destroy the Earth. Jürgen Randers (Norway), the other co-author, proclaimed,
"My daughter is the most dangerous animal of the world, since she is consuming 30 times more resources than a girl in a developing sector country."
A main demand of the report is to tax consumption of resources, which calls to end linking taxation to incomes, rather than to consumption, in order to make energy-intensive things like heating and commercial air flights much more expensive, forcing people to seek to use a minimum of resources.
Other demands include: funding of green conjunctural programs, state subsidies for alternate energy sources, income subsidies for workers shifting from a job in traditional industries to one in a green sector; increasing the retirement age to 70 years; tax rebates and a premium for women who either have no children at all, or only one. Higher incomes will be taxed, inheritance taxes be increased in stages to 100%. The premium would be paid only after the recipient reached 70 years.
As for the 1% growth aspect, it is clearly genocidal, since even the United Nations has declared that Africa would need 7-8% growth annually in order to acquire the minimum capability to deal with its poverty, disease, and other problems. And the New Silk Road will work only at annual minimum growth rates of 7-10%.
The report met partial criticism even among some Greens: Kerstin Andreae, vice chairwoman of the Greens Bundestag group, said on the no-child policy: "We cannot act along the slogan: abandon man, then the environment will benefit."
