1 Jacob Adjusted For Inflation (JAFI)

[theanimal]

If I spend 13k/yr, that's globally equitable and sustainable? (putting aside for now all the nitpicks).

Yes

If I'm talking with an Indian, a chinese guy, and a person from Norway, we're all eating exactly the same slice of pie if I spend 14k$, the Indian spends 680$ (but in rupees), the chinese guy spends 3k$, and the norwegian spends 1,360$?

No, you would just multiply it by the conversion factor in the third column to get it to a number in their local currency.

India is 20 rupees/USD so 83*13,600= 272,000 Rupees
Nowrway 10 NOK/USD leads to 136,000 NOK
China 4.2 CNY/USD leads to 57,120 CNY


Edited 2.0 : I think that second table I had was way off. I'm not sure what it was indicating anymore. I removed it. The US figure is $13,600 for everywhere. To find the foreign local equivalent, you adjust by the PPP conversion factor for the country in question.

[AxelHeyst]

Ah! Yeah, that's way more clear now, thanks. I feel like I still have some questions/lack of understanding about the relationship between global real, nominal, and ppp GDP numbers and global consumption of resources (and thus if I buy the 14k$ number), but that's on me to do my hw.

[7Wannabe5]

More than half the world's population lives on less than the PPP eco-Jacob, so this number actually also leaves large margin for charitable giving. if charitable giving was of form such as local currency not further supporting the income/profit of those currently spending more than 1 eco-Jacob, the top might also be forced to collapse. Otherwise, if the poor stay poor, simply cutting the top off at $30,000 PPP would also be sustainable. I think the fair share number unfortunately serves to somewhat hide the reality that those who are already or have been spending at this $30,000 PPP level are entirely responsible for the problem. IOW, it's just theoretical to calculate "as if" the global poor have the means to spend at this level, and thereby "tsk, tsk' even those at relative poverty level in affluent realms, when really it is clear that it is only middle-class (household of 3 humans with income approximating $100,000)and upper-income-class humans who have been capable of rendering the situation unsustainable with their spending. If capitalism is retained as intrinsic to model, there is also little point in imagining egalitarian distribution of income (spending potential) ever coming to be in model. What's the point of leaving room for the global poor to grow into $14,000/year spending absent support or second order consideration of likelihood? IOW, the model kind of inherently azz kisses current high earners. Kind of like a gun buyback program or Marcus Aurelius giving himself high-five in journal of stoic behavior for only banging 3 of his grandfather's 27 concubines.

Why do we build the wall?
My children, my children
Why do we build the wall?
Why do we build the wall?
We build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
How does the wall keep us free?
My children, my children
How does the wall keep us free?
How does the wall keep us free?
The wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
Who do we call the enemy?
My children, my children
Who do we call the enemy?
Who do we call the enemy?
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
Because we have and they have not!
My children, my children
Because they want what we have got!
Because we have and they have not!
Because they want what we have got!
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
What do we have that they should want?
My children, my children
What do we have that they should want?
What do we have that they should want?
We have a wall to work upon!
We have work and they have none
And our work is never done
My children, my children
And the war is never won
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
We build the wall to keep us free

-"Hadestown"- Anais Mitchell (2006)

[Jean]

I think using ppp is bullshit.
When stuff are expensive somewhere, it either mean that bringing those stuff here is ressource intensive, or that people maintaining the existence of a market here have ressource intensive lifestyle.

[zbigi]

I think using ppp is bullshit.
When stuff are expensive somewhere, it either mean that bringing those stuff here is ressource intensive, or that people maintaining the existence of a market here have ressource intensive lifestyle.

Stuff is mostly more expensive because of higher taxes, more regulations and (probably most importantly) higher wages. The same 1 kg of flour may be sold in a shop in Sri Lanka by a shop clerk making $200 a month, or $2000 a month in California. The extra $1800 in wages needs to come from extra markup on the flour, assuming both shops are identical otherwise. This affects entire supply chains (e.g. the production of flour requires multiple inputs and multiple processing steps, each with high wages, taxes and regulations increasing price along the way), which eventually leads to higher prices in more taxed, more regulated and more affluent places.

[Jean]

Those taxes and wages most likely en up in ressources consumptions.

[loutfard]

Sorry for asking a question without having read the entire thread first.

What about taxation and government spending? That is ~55% of total economic activity here. Isn't just government spending on my behalf is overshooting my planetary budget already?

[jacob]

The best/most accurate way to calculate your personal footprint would probably be to follow the methods in: https://newsociety.com/book/radical-simplicity/ ... recording what you pay for all the inputs and just adding them up. This will give you an ultra-local number that is personal to you and the market you trade in.

The motivation behind the original jacob unit was to follow the principle of parsimony to avoid having to do the mental gymnastics of all these adjustments. It was intended as a goal that would be reasonably accurate if imprecise to the exact dollar. In my opinion, it's good to be thinking about how these numbers come about but trying to come up with a more precise unit or adjusting the original unit is kinda missing the point. In summary, if anyone compelled to be a stickler about it can go do the full calculation of RS.

[Jin+Guice]

@jacob: I agree with the logic behind simple metrics that are interesting and good enough rather than having to factor in every moral calculation.

In my understanding not using the PPP adjustment across the world is the same as not using inflation across time. These adjustments end up giving more accurate numbers for the initial questions asked. If I'm comparing myself to you in 2005 it makes more sense to compare to the inflation adjusted number and if I'm looking at the world global median resource distribution, it makes more sense to use the PPP adjustment.

The adjustments end up being large. What we do with that information is up to us and that is where the moral calculus comes in.

It's inspiring that you have beat inflation every year and continued to lower your spending beyond your initial goal. In my opinion, finding the lower bound of spending, given the constraints of the life you want to lead, is more admirable than hitting a metric.

[7Wannabe5]

The interesting thing about attempting the full accounting as in Radical Simplicity or similar means, is that you also have to make choices such as how much footprint you would like to leave for wild animals (the 1.7 factor is not a given, but varies based on choices like this), and you also are made to account for your efficiency in DIY efforts such as gardening. If taken to communitarian extreme, in theory you should also account for inefficiencies such as utilizing your well-educated self for the purpose of planting radishes, because this is analogous to using heated interior living space for storing garden tools.

IOW, no matter how you perform the calculation at some juncture you have to begin to consider other factors related to quality of life. I mean, it's also not wrong to simply determine that human quality of life is unlikely to be maximized sustainably with 10 billion humans on planet Earth. The Radical Simplicity method forces choices like "my own backyard swimming pool" vs. "doing work I like vs. that of most efficient benefit to most other humans" vs. "preference for 10X as much land preserved for wildlife."

[ertyu]

Request: rn, what % is one JAFI of current median income?

[theanimal]

Request: rn, what % is one JAFI of current median income?

Median individual income for year round worker in the US is roughly 60k.

10,628(2024 JAFI)/60,000

=17.7%

[7Wannabe5]

For purposes of comparing consumption, it might be important to note that only a percentage of U.S. population is currently in the full-time workforce. Currently, 62.5% of working age population is in the workforce, and of those only 70% are full-time employed. So, only 44% of the working age population is being considered in the estimation of median full-time income of $60,000. Since it is also the case that approximately 17% of U.S. population is under age 16, and another 17% is over age 65, the estimation of $60,000 as median earnings really only applies to approximately 30% of the U.S. per capita. IOW, beyond those who are spending down accumulated wealth in retirement, the per capita income->consumption rate of a median working household (1 full-time worker =$60k, 1 part-time worker=$25k, 1 child under 16=$0k, 1 elder collecting basic social security=$12k) in the U.S. is closer to just 2-2.5X JAFI adjusted for inflation or $20,000-$25,000 per capita.

It might also be interesting to note that if those households earning/spending more than $30,000 per capita all cut their spending back to $30,000 per capita, and those spending less held spending steady, this would solve for climate change/resource depletion at current population level. IOW, at the world-wide level, at this juncture, resource depletion is really an upper-middle-class problem.

[sky]

What is the value of 1 J today? I seem to remember that at one time it meant the amount of income one would need to live an extreme frugal life in a low cost of living area of the US. I wonder how inflation is changing this.

I have become embarassingly wealthy and am no longer in touch with frugality, despite frugality being one of my most admired virtues.

[AxelHeyst]

1 Jacob is $7,000 in 2007 dollars. It's worth noting that that's what Jacob lived on in a *high* cost of living area of the US at the time. (ERE skills somewhat decouple potential actual COL from "such and such area's cost of living index" because ERE'rs play by different rules. Consider that richer areas have higher-value streams of "waste" than poorer areas, meaning for example it might be easier to pay less for food in a higher COL area with high quality food surplus 'waste' streams than in a lower COL area without access to high quality food surplus 'waste' streams.)

1 JAFI is is a Jacob Adjusted For Inflation. In 2024 that's $10,628.

1 JAFI is not the same as what some of us refer to as the global equitable burn rate, which is (GDP*Ecological Overshoot)/population [EDIT: I mean it's GPD/(Ecological Overshoot * Population) ] ~$7,400 in 2024 dollars. However, it's my understanding that this calc is essentially how Jacob derived his target of what we now call a "Jacob": the global equitable burn rate in 2007 was $7,000.

But see above as to whether the global equitable burn rate should be based off of GDP_PPP, not GDP, which would put the number at something like $13,600 in 2024 dollars.

[sky]

What is the significance of "global equitable burn rate" and "GDP*Ecological Overshoot"?

[jacob]

What is the significance of "global equitable burn rate" and "GDP*Ecological Overshoot"?

My original goal was to demonstrate by personal example that global ecological overshoot was not inevitable, that is, there was a solution for everybody on the planet to live a good life, both presently and in any future.

Another trajectory would be a global overshoot in which present (over)consumption lowers future consumption, that is, the present lives at the expense of the future. Also, a possibility is that the planet stays under the overshoot but some people (here) live at the expense of other people (there).

[AxelHeyst]

What is the significance of "global equitable burn rate" and "GDP*Ecological Overshoot"?

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT FOR MONTHS

The Global Equitable Burn Rate
“Imagine you're in line at a buffet,” I say. “You're near the front of the line, because you're a white American middle class guy. The table is piled with food. Everyone ahead of you in line is loading up their plates in a frenzy, some people even are getting wheelbarrows and shoveling stuff in. Got the picture?”

“Sure. Feeding frenzy at the buffet,” he smiles. We’ve always been a sucker for buffets.

“Now look behind you,” I say. “What do you see?”

His smile fades. “—Oh. I see about eight billion people, don’t I.”

I nod. “And you start to wonder if there is enough food for all of them, too. You start to ponder the ethical implications of taking more food than you really need.”

“That's quite a metaphor,” he says. “The food on the table represents global GDP, doesn't it.”

“That's right,” I say. “But it's not as simple as dividing global GDP by population and saying that's what's fair. Because the global economy is consuming resources at a rate that would take more than one earth to supply. There’s actually too much food on the table. So the sustainable fair share of consumption is GDP divided by the global human footprint, divided by population.”

“What is that number?” he asks.

“A little over seven thousand dollars a year,” I say. “As far as calculations go, you can make all kinds of arguments against it. If everyone only spent seven grand, the economy would collapse. It doesn't take into account the impact of specific purchasing decisions, like taking a train vs flying. Seven thousand dollars consumes more in rural Ohio than it does in New York City.” I wave my hand. “It's just a rough calculation, a guideline, not a precise moral mandate. It paints a picture of how ridiculously out of bounds the normal western lifestyle expectation is. The standard American lifestyle is not a few small eco-consumerist tweaks away from a sustainable civilization. Also, having this number in mind can help with eco-analysis paralysis.”

“You mean like how people agonize over whether they should buy a stainless steel straw to drink out of rather than use disposable recycled paper ones?”

“Yeah,” I say. “People agonize over tiny bullshit like that when they're blowing seventy a year like I was, flying to Bali for yoga retreats for a long weekend and burning a barrel of gasoline every weekend going to the mountains. The sustainable equitable consumption calculation is nice because it gives you something to aim for and you can focus on more important stuff than if your fucking toothbrush handle is made from ethically sourced bamboo or not.”

“But does it matter?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Will a few people reducing their consumption to the global equitable burn rate make a difference?”

“Of course not,” I say. “That’s not the point. The point is that learning how to build a good life that doesn’t cost so much money is a prerequisite for becoming a post-consumer and blazing the path to the successor cultures that will, one way or another, consume no more than the carrying capacity of the earth and make space for people to live better lives. It’s a way to deprogram consumer ideology in your own mind. It’s a way to crowbar your way to economic freedom as quickly as possible. And, as someone who claims to be bothered by the fact that global civilization is in overshoot, it’s a way of putting your money where your mouth is. It is, in other words, a matter of character. There’s a whole bucket of reasons to do it and very few good ones not to.”

For fun:
Scenario 1:


Scenario 2:

[sky]

I suppose that living with lower expenses and consuming less generally leads to a lower ecological impact.

The challenge that I see is that creating a regenerative lifestyle takes quite a bit of capital. At least, the way that I imagine a regenerative lifestyle includes a house with enough land for a garden in a location that does not require a fossil fuel vehicle. I'm sure there are ways to hack this concept, but when I look at my area, it requires an investment of about $200k.

[AxelHeyst]

Why draw the boundary of "this system is regenerative" at your property line? I think its highly unrealistic to expect/ask individuals and households to be 'regenerative' (what's that actually mean?) at their individual scale. Consider your self/household as a part of a larger system, and how that larger system might be regenerative at the bioregional level taking advantage of scale effects.

Does such a larger regenerative system in your area exist? Perhaps not.

Perhaps that system does not exist because there are not enough households in the region running at a low enough consumption level to be that critical mass of "good ingredients" necessary for that larger regenerative system to emerge. So maybe the first step towards the creation of a bioregional regenerative system is for enough households to get their consumption levels below a certain threshold...