SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
joseph stiglitz
Warning 'Future of Science' Is at Stake, 80+ Nobel Laureates Endorse Harris
A Trump victory, the Nobel winners said, would "jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology, and impede our responses to climate change."
Oct 25, 2024
Saying that the upcoming U.S. presidential election could be the most important ever for the future of science, a group of 82 Nobel Prize winners in medicine, physics, chemistry, and economics signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris and warning against allowing former President Donald Trump to return to the Oval Office.
The letter, obtained by The New York Times on Thursday, credits advances in science and technology with "enormous increases in living standards and life expectancies over the past two centuries" and expresses concern that Trump could threaten that progress.
"This is the most consequential presidential election in a long time, perhaps ever, for the future of science and the United States," the group of U.S. laureates wrote. "We, the undersigned, strongly support Harris."
The signatories, who include four who won the prize this month, first praise Harris for understanding both the importance of science and technology and that "maintaining America's leadership in these fields requires budgetary support from the federal government, independent universities, and international collaboration."
They also contrasted the two candidates' approach to immigration.
"Harris also recognizes the key role that immigrants have always played in the advancement of science," they wrote.
They then warned of what a second Trump presidency might entail.
"Should Donald Trump win the presidential election, he would undermine future U.S. leadership on these and other fronts, as well as jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology, and impede our responses to climate change," they wrote.
"I hope it's a wake-up call for people."
Project 2025, the road map for a second Trump term, contains several anti-science agenda items such as plans get rid of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Trump also displayed great hostility to science during his first term. He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and rolled back 125 climate and environmental regulations. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he floated false cures such as exposure to ultraviolet light and injecting disinfectants. And he proposed a budget that would have dramatically slashed funding for health and science agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Science Foundation.
It was partly these budget cuts, as well Trump's "anti-science" and "anti-university" view, that motivated Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001, to draft Thursday's letter, he told the Times.
While Stiglitz said scientists usually "like to stick to their knitting," in this case "they've recognized this is a moment where you can't be silent."
"I hope it's a wake-up call for people," Stiglitz told the Times. "A consequence of this election is the really profound impact that his agenda has on science and technology."
Stiglitz also drafted another letter, signed by 23 U.S. Nobel Prize winners in economics, endorsing Harris' economic vision over Trump's.
"While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we believe that, overall, Harris' economic agenda will improve our nation's health, investment, sustainability, resilience, employment opportunities, and fairness and be vastly superior to the counterproductive economic agenda of Donald Trump," the Nobel economists wrote.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Economists See Honduras' Progressive Tax Plan as Model for Other Countries
"Such a law has implications far beyond Honduras' borders, setting an example of how states can assert sovereignty through taking action against tax injustice individually and collectively," 85 leading economists wrote.
Jul 31, 2024
Eighty five progressive economists from around the world on Wednesday issued a statement in support of a tax reform being considered in Honduras, arguing that it could be a model for other Global South countries, as it would tighten tax law for rich people and corporations while preventing the country from becoming a tax haven.
The Tax Justice Law, first proposed by the administration of leftist President Xiomara Castro in March 2023, has remained stuck in parliament due to opposition from conservative, pro-business forces in Honduras, one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the Western Hemisphere.
The proposed reforms include closing corporate tax loopholes; taxing companies' global profits, not just national profits; ending bank secrecy; and holding beneficial owners liable for their taxes. The law wouldn't create new taxes or raise current rates.
The 85 economists, including Joseph Stiglitz, Gabriel Zucman, Jeffrey Sachs, Ann Pettifor, and Yanis Varoufakis, published the statement in Progressive International, a left-wing network establish in 2020. They cited estimates that the country had lost about $20 billion in tax revenues between 2010 and 2023 due to tax loopholes—more than the entire $16.6 billion debt that the country faces, at crippling interest rates.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras 🇭🇳 — 85 of the world's leading economists, incl. @JosephEStiglitz, @Jayati1609, @JoseA_Ocampo, @AnnPettifor, @gabriel_zucman and @yanisvaroufakis, endorse the @PartidoLibre Tax Justice Law, "setting an example" for tax policy worldwide. Read the letter ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/9ogi9SlWtf
— Progressive International (@ProgIntl) July 31, 2024
Castro was elected in late 2021 and took office in January 2022 with an "inspiring agenda," but has faced opposition from conservative forces and the United States, according to Karen Spring, coordinator of the Honduras Solidarity Network.
Castro's husband Manuel Zelaya, also a leftist, led the country from 2006 until 2009 but was ousted in a coup, and the country descended into chaos in the 2010s, with drug gangs dominant and the government mired in corruption. The Intercept has reported that the U.S. may have encouraged the 2009 coup.
In 2022, Castro and the National Congress of Honduras reversed a conservative initiative to establish special economic zones, most notably one on the island of Roatán. However, Honduras Próspera, a U.S. company backed by billionaire libertarian Peter Thiel and others, has sued the government for $11 billion over the reversal, using the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system that allows multinationals to sue nations that institute new laws that affect their profits and have the cases heard by private tribunals.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other progressive lawmakers cited the Honduras Próspera case when pushing to abolish the ISDS system last year.
As with Castro's efforts on special economic zones, her tax reforms face hurdles.
"Big capital and the media ecosystem close to it have launched a smear campaign against the Tax Justice Law," Ojalá, a digital nonprofit magazine based in Mexico, reported last year.
Every major union organization in Honduras supports the proposed law, a union leader told Ojalá. And the proposal has now gained international attention. Last week, the South Centre, a research institute based in Geneva, issued a report in favor of the law, calling it "timely and welcome," and arguing that it's in keeping with the global minimum tax agreement made by 137 countries in 2021, whose implementation is ongoing.
Similarly, the group of economists on Wednesday wrote that Honduras was "on the path to being labeled a tax haven" but could "turn the page" with the passage of the Tax Justice Law, which would "establish a fairer and more robust system of taxation and incentives that will provide a sounder footing for Honduran development."
The economists concluded that "such a law has implications far beyond Honduras' borders, setting an example of how states can assert sovereignty through taking action against tax injustice individually and collectively."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Youth Fight Back as Biden DOJ Seeks to Derail Historic Climate Case
"These youth have been politically targeted and persecuted, for over eight years, as the enormous power and machine of the Department of Justice singles them out among tens of thousands of other plaintiffs."
Feb 02, 2024
As the Biden administration seeks to derail a historic youth-led climate lawsuit against the U.S. government, plaintiffs in the suit—some of them now in their mid-to-late 20s—on Thursday moved to block the Department of Justice from further delaying the case.
Plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States filed a challenge to the Biden administration's bid for a stay in the case, calling the Justice Department's latest petition for a writ of mandamus "nothing short of shocking."
The DOJ's Justice Manual "provides that a writ of mandamus is an 'extraordinary remedy, which should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance,' the plaintiffs' filing notes. "The only emergency in this case is the climate emergency that defendants created and the Department of Justice prolongs with further delays."
"The true irreparable harm is the approximate cost of climate disasters or other climate economic harm since this case began and even since the first trial in this case was stopped in October 2018."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz—a longtime backer of the plaintiffs—filed a declaration supporting their motion. Lambasting the DOJ's claim that the agency is "irreparably harmed" by having to dedicate human and financial resources to the trial, Stiglitz wrote that "to suggest the harm to children's health and homes and constitutional rights is worth less than the money the government has to spend to litigate a case is to suggest every case could be stayed only because it cost taxpayer dollars to litigate."
"The true irreparable harm is the approximate cost of climate disasters or other climate economic harm since this case began and even since the first trial in this case was stopped in October 2018 and through the end of 2023, along with any projections of the range of harm going forward," Stiglitz added, "as well as the amount the U.S. has spent (and continues to spend) subsidizing the fossil fuel industry."
Originally filed in 2015 when the plaintiffs were between 8 and 19 years old, Juliana v. United States accuses the federal government of violating young people's constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, and argues that its actions contributing to the planetary emergency constitute a failure to protect essential public trust resources.
The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have all worked to kill the case, delaying trial by years. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the case from going to trial days before it was set to begin. On December 29, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the plaintiffs could proceed to trial, which was set to begin January 19. However, on January 18 the DOJ said it would file for a writ of mandamus.
The incessant delays have been accompanied by what the plaintiffs describe as "the most aggressive and discriminatory legal tactics" used against them by the government.
As the plaintiffs' latest filing explains:
These youth have been politically targeted and persecuted, for over eight years, as the enormous power and machine of the Department of Justice singles them out among tens of thousands of other plaintiffs, in an effort to stop our nation's youth from taking the witness stand, when every court to review the Juliana plaintiffs' claims has said that there is life and death at stake, the survival of the nation is at stake, and there is merit to their constitutional claims. All they seek after trial is a declaratory judgment of their rights and the government's wrongs, just as the students in Brown v. Board of Education did 70 years ago.
As Stiglitz concluded in his motion, "The federal government has expended taxpayer money taking the case up on appeal, rather
than allowing it to go to trial."
"The amount of time and money spent over the past six years seeking early appeals and mandamus has been large," he added. "We have already laid out the magnitude of the damages to the youth plaintiffs, their generation, and the public. In economic terms, and for the health of the nation, the balancing of potential harms is clear: This case should finally be decided at trial without further delay."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular