No Justice, No Increase

How a just transition can build family income in the US economy.

We have gone through a difficult three years from 2020 to 2022. We have had to deal with the end of one war in Afghanistan, and the beginning of another war in Ukraine. We have also had to deal with COVID fractures in the supply chain, shortages, illnesses, and death. Many people point to what has happened in the last couple of years and blame it on the pandemic. However, when we look at the actual figures, we see that what has happened to the income of most Americans and the impact they
have on the US economy has not as much to do with COVID as people would have you to believe.

One way that we can deal with the declining income of US families, the super explosion of wealth with the 1% of the US population is to provide a just transition as we move from a fossil fuel based economy to a clean renewable energy economy. However, the only way that this economic transition can take place is to ensure that people with a history of pollution and property as well as the middle class gain economic support from the Inflation Reduction Act, Justice 40, CHIPS and many of the economic
developments within the United States of America. If we look at the Pew Research Center study andthe decline of income among families in the USA just in the year 2021, we will notice that middle class
income declined by 50%, poor and low-income people’s wealth decline by 29%, and those in the upper class wealth also declined by 21%.
One may say that these economic downturns are related to the pandemic. However, an article in Fortune magazine written by Will Daniel, “U.S. companies post their biggest profit growth in decades by jacking up prices during the pandemic” also lets us know that during the pandemic year of 2021 the wealth that was attained by the 1% was actually 50 billion dollars that was gained by 90% of the rest of the US population. Corporations had a bumper year in 2021 with their revenue increasing by 22.6% according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. So how can we rectify this situation? Well, with the inflation Reduction Act, Justice 40 Initiative, and other acts of Congress along with budgetary allocations, literally hundreds of billions of dollars from the federal government, and trillions of dollars in investment from corporations, and philanthropic entities will be flowing into the banks and the accounts of those who are already wealthy. This will happen primarily because of large scale macro solutions that are being not only proposed, but implemented.

Macro solutions, such as carbon capture, and carbon sequestration, such as the 30x30 Forestry plan, supported by the Biden administration, money that will be used for installing electrical charges throughout the nation, and that huge a swift drive towards manufacturing electric vehicles, and other
clean and renewable energy industries. So how do we ensure that money actually gets to communities? The first thing we need to do is realize that some of the existing models that we have in place can be updated so that they reflect other models of business that work and are successful, and also generate revenue and infrastructure on the community level. So while we have, as in the case of South Carolina, a $3.5 billion dollar battery recycling plant coming and, an electric vehicle battery plant that is being built that will employ 1600 people, along with the facility to construct charging stations, and much, much more. Much of this money can go to the community, and not to the usual suspects.

I had a conversation with a member of the NAACP and we were talking about one of the assets that every community has when it comes to training people for new jobs and vocations and that is our technical colleges. However, after acknowledging that this is a community asset, we also realize that there is a new model that has been in place for many years, called community in place training and education. In other words, there are many people who do not feel comfortable in a campus setting,
people who have transportation challenges, and people who just cannot afford to go to a technical college that has this tuition based not only on the teacher’s salary and books, but based also on infrastructure and the cost of their edifies.

Universities all across the country have shifted towards online training, and community in place training, where you can walk into a library, a community center, a church or even a home and find that people
are being taught by professors and teachers on off-campus sites. While we are training people to recycle batteries, to build electric vehicle batteries, charging stations, robots, drones, etc. these technical colleges and corporations can also conduct the train-the-trainer. These trainers will be able to train people in their communities. The value to that is that if we run into a situation as we did with manufacturing in America, with a passage of NAFTA, the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, we may one day find that our manufacturers have decided to move to Asia or Africa or India, where they can reduce their costs and leave our communities behind. Meaning there will no longer offer jobs or training to people.
With community in place training, people will have the ability to teach people and create jobs and businesses on a small scale, not only locally in their communities, but also help businesses to become national entities or be able to compete on the global plane. Another thing that we can do in order to ensure much of the money that is being generated with a just transition will be to ensure that community benefits agreements are put in place so that we don’t just have facilities coming into communities and the states benefit, and the counties, and cities benefit from taxes. Company benefits by having employees and producing products. Some individuals benefit because they have jobs. The community at large does not directly benefit. Community Benefit Agreements, can ensure that there are parks, health care centers, and other infrastructure buildings to benefit people in the communities — -which in turn will enhance the dynamics, the income, and the economics of a communities.

The concept of a just transition is that as we move forward, we must be sure that we don’t leave people behind. But if we look at the current trajectory of how the Infrastructure Reduction Act money is
scheduled to be used, and how the Justice 40 money is just beginning to trickle towards communities, we realize that if we do not have a more aggressive and visionary approach that we will in fact, create a
brand new set of divides between those who are wealthy, those who are middle class, and those who are poor just as we have done with the educational and digital divides. When we look at the decline of
income in America, and the wealth that corporations and the 1% are gaining, there is more than enough to correct the decline of American households’ income and wealth. We must be ever vigilant and make sure that as our policy makers propose new economic development, and propose ways to move from a fossil fuel based economy to a clean, renewable energy economy. And as they move to build resilience, mitigation and adaptation in communities that are already being battered by climate impacts, such as in Louisiana, and other coastal cities, we must be vigilant and make sure that the wealth does not continue to flow to the people who need it least, but that it flows to all of us that we might as Martin Luther King, Jr. says, have come over to America in different ships. But we are all in the same boat now. Because of America’s citizen, income and wealth decline, it will impact everybody’s rise or sinking in America today. So we know that where there is no environmental or economic justice, there can be no increase in the income and wealth of everyday American citizens.