Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Jean wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 09, 2022 10:45 am

my ego was hurt when i noticed that i wasn't listed among the 1-jafi ereers, and i deemed necessary to let you all know, that i've been bellow jafi for several years. maybe my journal is too boring.

I consider you the best ERE person since mikebos.

thank you, the compliment is appreciated.
did you read the animal's journal. he does everything i wan't to do, and what i also do myself, he does it better. maybe i only get competitive when i see an other ginger.

@Jean - ha, I will certainly read it fully.

me, too. not the hurt ego part but, before i found this job, during the time i didn't work between feb 2020 and nov 2021, that was my approximate spend. of course i benefit from having been in a lcol country and i wouldn't call myself collapse-proof by any stretch of the imagination. i was still very much an urban dweller who chased grocery store deals. I didn't report numbers in my journal, though, so I don't expect anyone to have known.

We've broken $10k! Current number is $10,003.65 USD for 1 JAFI.

white belt wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 02, 2022 11:35 am

We've broken $10k! Current number is $10,003.65 USD for 1 JAFI.

Let's hear it for simple maths

Not only that but since GBP has gone down the shitter we've been getting much closer to 1 JAFI.

New and updated JAFI calc presented in a Danish interview with Jacob*.

Translated by Google:

Simple high school calculation: 28 July** is 209 days out of 365. The world's GDP is around 95,000 billion dollars.

There are 7.9 billion people in the world.

So if the ethics is to divide the cake equally without driving the earth into depression, then there is for each person 95000/7.9/(365/209)=$6,680/year/person or about DKK 45,000 per year for consumption.

*https://www.wannabewalden.com/jacob-lund-fisker/
**Earth Overshoot Day

$6680 - this is a new lower figure?

OT but Danish looks quite easy to read.

Unfortunately, the median per capita income is still well below 1 eco-Jacob, and dividing the cake equally would result in greater consumption, at least in the short term. It might be interesting to consider the alternative ways of shifting the entire distribution, although that would certainly displace billions globally back into severe starvation-level poverty absent redistribution. 209/365 = 57%, and 57% of median U.S. per capita income of $37,000(for example) would be right around $21,000 per capita per year.

If capitalistic system of property acquisition ownership is maintained while overall consumption is lowered in any manner, the wealthy are left with increasingly more control vs. current consumption, and it's kind of hard to imagine that scenario ending well either - imagine if every affluent frugal human used all savings to keep buying more and more land with no trespassing signs installed. Assortative mating and other oligarchal-socialistic mechanisms have already dampened the rags-to-riches-to-rags-again-in-4-generations prior rule of thumb, but enforced frugality without redistribution (or inflating away savings, etc.) would really change the game. OTOH, the demographic shift towards reduced fertility is seemingly stronger than previously predicted, so upwards wage pressure will likely chip away at the advantage of capital. etc. etc. etc. ???

chenda wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 03, 2022 9:06 am

$6680 - this is a new lower figure?

The "J" gets updated every year. It's been around $6-7k for the past 20 years. Of course that buys less and less but that's because the economy now only grows proportional to our adding more people and moving further into overshoot. Another way of saying that is that total factor productivity growth in the consumer economy is near zero.

Adjusting for inflation goes against the idea of the original calculation. JAFI is more useful for people who want to compare their current spending to the numbers given in the ERE blog.

I see...so maintaining $6000-$7000 is the only really sustainable number, at least until the point it takes one below subsistence levels. At which time we may have all gone off the cliff...

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:11 am

OTOH, the demographic shift towards reduced fertility is seemingly stronger than previously predicted, so upwards wage pressure will likely chip away at the advantage of capital. etc. etc. etc. ???

I find it hard to wrap my mind around all the variables but I saw an interesting documentary last night about how climate change is impacting Pakistan. Men baking bricks in 50 degrees C and frequently dieing of heat stroke, villages been swept away by melting glaciers and urbanites having to steal water from government pipelines at night. Though it didn't mention the countrys population has almost quintupled since 1947, which strikes me as a gigantic failure in family planning policy. But from a national security point of view it might have been regarded as a gigantic success.

chenda wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:05 am

I see...so maintaining $6000-$7000 is the only really sustainable number, at least until the point it takes one below subsistence levels. At which time we may have all gone off the cliff...

Already a reminder that "J" is very much a back-of-the-envelope calculation intended to be somewhat accurate rather than ultra-precise. This is also the "world-number". Previous objections have included PPP-corrections. These days the ecological footprint network calculate the footprint of many countries---in practice they're given as an overshoot calendar date---so one can calculate a better number on a country basis using country GDP / country population / country overshoot.

@chenda:

The probability that global population might top out around 9 billion and then start to decline mid-century is increasing. So, Pakistani and Sub-Saharan African kids will be everyone’s only kids given continued globalization. IOW, might be wise to have contingency plan to pay $200+/hr to get anybody to wipe your butt if you will be living yet decrepit in 2052. Of course, some solar powered care robots might help...

Yes, I find it mind blowing that the world's population has almost doubled in my lifetime. I suppose I am part of the doubling but still, its a shame we didn't get to grips with the problem earlier.

Conversley parts of the world have a shortage of people, and there's a shortage of 70 million women in China and India thanks to widespread female infanticide.

jacob wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:29 pm

This is also the "world-number". Previous objections have included PPP-corrections. These days the ecological footprint network calculate the footprint of many countries---in practice they're given as an overshoot calendar date---so one can calculate a better number on a country basis using country GDP / country population / country overshoot.

I've used the Global Footprint Network data, available here (its the same nonprofit that makes the "overshoot" website) to calculate the eco-Jacob (you mind the name?) for different countries. Tables don't work here so it's generated plain text:
As you can see, Switzerland has a pretty high Earth eco-Jacob but a lower national eco-Jacob. This is because Switzerland has one of the highest GDP per capita in the world, so even if its footprint was as high as most developed countries (which it isn't), the eco-Jacob (money you can spend in a year without theoretically using too much resources) would still be high. On the other side, the low national eco-Jacob is explained because Switzerland is a small mountain country so the country biocapacity is small, thus meaning we need to spend much less to be able to live only using the country resources (sovereignty).

Another exemple is Sweden, which, like most northern countries has a very high biocapacity per capita (this is explained by the low population density and the big surfaces of the countries). Swedish people have a somewhat high footprint (still lower than Canada, US or Norway though), but they also have a high biocapacity, therefore, they have an insanely high national eco-Jacob, but a much lower Earth eco-Jacob.

So, depending on ethics (are commons shared nationally or globally?), we can decide to use the Earth eco-Jacob or the national eco-Jacob. To see which countries have a lot of biocapacity compared to the Earth (the average, therefore), we can calculate the country/Earth biocapacity ratio. Sweden has a very high one and Switzerland a small one. It explains a lot! Also, if you look at the map on the same website, you see it's mostly Northern and Southern countries with big areas who have a biocapacity reserve. Sadly, Pakistan (and also a lot of african countries near the Equator) uses more than their national biocapacity, even though they only use 0.49 Earths!

I think the eco-Jacob is best calculated on a case-to-case basis, but generally, it is safe to assume one must stay around the Earth eco-Jacob for the Earth (Global Earth eco-Jacob?), because it's already averaged. Small countries like Luxembourg, Switzerland, Nederlands, etc. will have a high GDP. The same goes for Northern countries with they high biocapacity. So we need to average this. But maybe it just might be than some countries (like Qatar) can't actually live under the eco-Jacob because they'd need to reduce their population 100-fold. I don't want the Global Earth eco-Jacob to be ridiculously low because of these cunts.

The best would be to make an average for different climate regions (like Scandinavia, Western Europe, Canada on it's own, USA on it's own, Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, etc.). It would make senses because countries in a region share the same commons shall they want it or not (Ethiopia building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is fucking up other Easter African countries access to water, but not, let's say, China access to water). This is both pragmatic and ethic IMO. I'm too lazy and I already spent to much time on the computer today!

If someone's willing to take up the task, you'd need to compile each countries biocapacity and footprint in a given region and sum them to make the region biocapacity and region footprint. You can then use it for calculating the region eco-Jacob with the region GDP per capita.

EDIT: reading a bit the other posts here →

chenda wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:20 am

I find it hard to wrap my mind around all the variables but I saw an interesting documentary last night about how climate change is impacting Pakistan. Men baking bricks in 50 degrees C and frequently dieing of heat stroke, villages been swept away by melting glaciers and urbanites having to steal water from government pipelines at night. Though it didn't mention the countrys population has almost quintupled since 1947, which strikes me as a gigantic failure in family planning policy. But from a national security point of view it might have been regarded as a gigantic success.

Exactly! The country population being so high makes their national biocapacity per capita extremely low! Therefore they are in deficit, which they probably wouldn't be in if they had proper family planning.

@7Wannabe5 Instead of solar powered nurses, you can also have one children and I guess he should be enough to care for you and the other parent when you're old. Russian babushkas live super old with family to care for them but I guess it's mostly them who take care of the garden in the countryside, so you don't actually need a high fecondity rate to keep people from dying. I believe it's an illusion that comes from overadapting to the capitalist system of social security. From there also comes the fear that if there is no more growth, the economy will collapse

In anyway, we should maybe let go of this idea of living too long past "ability to care for ourselves" date. I mean, at least people not planning on having any children, because then it means you're counting on other people's children to care for you, which is bad

I’ve been mulling over this for a while, nice to see someone compiling some figures!

It seems obvious that the national figure isn’t that relevant from an ethical standpoint. It might be a decent predictor of the direction of future migration flows, though. And it of course points to the need for family planning in some places if one wants to avoid that.

There is also using the world PPP GDP per capita figure. In 2017 numbers that is right around 10000 USD (1.6/2.8 * 17500). This attempts to account for differentials in labour costs, currency manipulation etc. This seems like the most reasonable metric to me. Using the country earth jacob might give some insights when comparing reasonably similar countries, though. Especially on the footprint side, if efficiency is higher in some countries due to better policy. But not perhaps for countries that just happen to have been endowed with massive hydro capacity, for example, as that won’t scale and is more of a windfall.

There is also the question of children. It seems reasonable that families shouldn’t get to capture a whole extra capita the second they have a baby and that there should exist economies of scale even with older teenagers. If one accepts that perspective, there is some extra capacity to distribute to singles and empty nesters.

oldbeyond wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 05, 2023 10:46 am

There is also the question of children. It seems reasonable that families shouldn’t get to capture a whole extra capita the second they have a baby and that there should exist economies of scale even with older teenagers. If one accepts that perspective, there is some extra capacity to distribute to singles and empty nesters.

This has been discussed extensively before in some other thread. The simplest (standard OECD) procedure is to factor with the squareroot of the household size to account for economy of scale, e.g. if one person uses $10000, then two persons should use $14142, not $20000. There are at least two other methods, one using tables, but the squareroot is quick and easy and pretty close to the table values.

oldbeyond wrote:There is also the question of children. It seems reasonable that families shouldn’t get to capture a whole extra capita the second they have a baby and that there should exist economies of scale even with older teenagers. If one accepts that perspective, there is some extra capacity to distribute to singles and empty nesters.

It does seem like "rewarding" those who increase the population is counter-productive. OTOH, even though I am currently a single, empty-nester who is choosing to live by herself, I believe that "choosing to live by yourself" is no different than choosing to own/operate a car, so it is also behavior that shouldn't be "rewarded" in calculation. This is also important because getting beyond "choosing to live by yourself" is the only way to get past property tax as fairly uniform per capita or head tax as opposed to being something more like per kitchen sink tax.