2020 Democratic Primary Debate 2 Part 1

The current democratic primary debates are very interesting because of the 10 candidates on stage per night results in very limited amount of time for each candidate to speak. That being said it is important for this blog to report on technology topics that are brought up in these debates.
The only topic where technology was mentioned was about climate change. Climate change was delved into in blog posts about the first primary debate. It is important to note that there was barely a mention of the debate about the existence of climate change as man made, the scientific consensus is nearing absolute on humans impact. John Delaney was asked to explain why he didn't agree with the green new deal. He cited linking so many other issues into a policy that should work to achieve green house gas emissions reductions.
His proposal is to tax carbon, really carbon dioxide emissions, and return the revenue as a dividend. Taxing carbon is an approach that has been proposed multiple times over the years. Carbon taxation is essentially a production based tax on emissions. This may seem rather simple implement and it is at a fundamental level. The issues with carbon taxes arise when trying to calculate what the tax should be. Setting a tax level that would realistically match the impact from CO2 emmissions might kill the economy and cause a backlash from citizens who are sufferring under this policy. If the tax rate is set too low then it will have a negligible impact on our emissions and fail as a policy prescription to resolve climate change. This balancing act is only further going to get muddled by the fact that in order to pass a law other politicians, some who don't believe in climate change, will have an opportunity to impact Delaney's proposal.
Additionallt he wants to increase the research funding in the Department of Energy on alternative energy five fold from current levels. The idea behind this part of Delaney's plan is to spur innovation to provide solutions to climate change. The move to a net carbon zero economy will require innovation by private industry to achieve this goal. A significant increase in funding for research and development money towards new technologies is nice, but the proposed amount of increase may be dwarfed by the scale of the problem. Department of Energy research and development funding is not a large sum such that Delaney's proposed five fold increase will not even come close to current Defense department research funding.
He directly endorsed direct air capture technology. Direct air capture technology is a system that seperates carbon dioxide from the air. Delaney is the first candidate to mention and/or endorse the use of this technology. The technologies end goal would be to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it underground in a carbon capture storage system. This is a system that is currently under development and has been proven at least at a prototype level. There are still questions as to whether it can be an important player in solving climate change. The current scientific knowledge about climate change is that to achieve a one degree celsius global average temperature increase we need carbon dioxide levels to be at 350 parts per billion. The latest readings are at or over 400 parts per billion. Fundamentally this means that not only do we need to achieve a net zero emissions, but we would need to actually reduce the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. Direct air capture technology could provide a way to do this. The other key potential benefit of direct air capture technology is that it can counter some of the excess emissions in the transition from our current fossil fuel dependent economy to a green economy, operating on net zero emissions. The transition, or scale up of new technologies, will not be instantaneous and may suffer from friction that will delay expected reductions in our emissions.
Delaney is also interested in a climate corps. Unfortunately due to the time limits in the debate this came across as a sound bite and not a solid policy. It would be nice to get a more concrete information in regards to what this corps would do and how this would tackle climate change.
Elizabeth Warren discussed her two trillion dollar green manufacturing plan. She wants to invest in manufacturing the green technologies of the future in America. This policy proposal is in many ways tailored to the midwest industrial manufacturing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The current state of green manufacturing is that China is the leader in the development of electric cars, solar panels, and other technology which will be the backbone of the zero carbon economy. Warren's plan is ambitious in that she wants to use a significant government investment to spark manufacturing in America of these technologies. The risks are that any attempt to compete with China and other possible Asian countries may turn out to be un-profitable. Solyndra was an infamous attempt by the Obama administration to invest in green manufacturing, and the company would file for bankruptcy within 24 months of receiving a multi-million dollar loan. Solyndra's failure as a business was due to China's significant investment in solar panel production. They flooded the market and drove down the price to a point that Solyndra couldn't make a profit. This risks does exist in Warren's two trillion dollar plan. In addition she has stated that this investment will generate approximately one million jobs. In order for some companies to remain competitive they may decide to use automation and not hire nearly as many employees as expected.
John Hickenlooper stated that we have to work together with other countries to avert the worse of climate change. This is true, but currently the U.S. is the only country that is planning on leaving the Paris Agreement on climate change. He did in the previous debate state that he would return the U.S. to the Paris climate agreement. Unfortunately this is was also the extent of his remarks. This leaves many Americans who are interested in knowing concrete plans for dealing with climate change disappointed.
Tim Ryan reiterated his desire to dominate electric vehicle production in support of aspects of Elizabeth Warren's plan. He proposed to have a chief manufacturing officer who would help reinvigorate American manufacturing. The  chief manufacturing officer position as it was briefly described would help manufacturers grow and partner them with government programs. This is an interesting concept that hopefully Tim Ryan will be able to elucidate for the electorate to make a decision on this proposal. His last proposal to fight climate change was to promote regenerative agriculture whereby carbon is stored in the soil thru practices including cover crops and soil management. This may have been among the strongest moments of the debate for Tim Ryan. He showed a good command of his proposals and didn't repeat what had been stated multiple times by other candidates before him. He managed to link climate change, which has the strongest support in most urban areas, between the urban and industrial cities to the rural agrarian economy.
Steve Bullock was the only candidate to mention the Republican denial of climate change. His stated remedy for this was to fight corruption. It is correct that the oil and gas industry spend significant sums lobbying in congress and also provide large donations to candidates thru political action committees. Unfortunately we didn't hear a plan that touched on how to reduced greenhouse gas emissions from our economy, which according to climate scientists is vital to avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Bullock did manage to point to the correlation between an expanded fire season and climate change. He also managed to make a great point about the workers who have spent their entire working life powering America who would stand to lose their jobs. Bullock is the governor of Montana, a state with significant coal mining operations, and it would be expected for him to have a plan to fight climate change that included how to deal with coal miners, coal plant operators, and other fossil fuel workers who could be displaced.

2020 Democratic Primary Debate Part 2

Thursday night's debate was quite different from Wednesday's debate. This was the loaded debate with just about all the front runners in the polls. This slate of candidates discussed technology far more than the previous night's candidates. You can get the fact checking here if that is what you are interested in. This post will look into the technology topics that were brought up during the debate.
Andrew Yang was asked about his Universal Basic Income (UBI) plan as the first question directed to him in the debate. He proceeded to describe his proposal and mentioned that part of the reason Donald Trump was elected in 2016 was that 4 million jobs had been automated away. He also stated that the following jobs were going to be eliminated due to automation: fast food workers, truck d rivers, and retail jobs. Automation is the process where by a task that is done by a human is done by an electronic system, often called robots, without error. Automation equipment leverages the ability of small microprocessor systems to control hydraulic actuators, welding tools, conveyor belts, and other automated actions. Early automation focused on creating devices that could do repetitive tasks on assembly lines. The automotive industry has implemented robots that weld car bodies with more reliability than a human. As automation technology developed automation devices could not only perform the operation, but do a visual inspection of work and identify defects. In the last ten years or so automation has begun a new phase of development. Automation had largely been restricted to the plant floor. The capabilities of microprocessors, miniaturization of sensors, and development of advanced identification, tracking, and control algorithms is leading to automation of more advanced tasks.  Uber, Lyft, and Tesla are working on developing self driving cars and trucks. Amazon is working on drones that will deliver packages. Home Depot has had self checkout counters and similar systems are popping up in other retail businesses. These are just a sample of the new industry disrupting ideas that will use automation.
 Automation in some industries has displaced many blue collar jobs that were based on completing the same task repetitively for hours on end. This is particularly true of the industrial cities in the Midwestern states of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The semiconductor industry that is fueling many new technologies is wholly dependent on automated systems to process the die to create the chips running your cell phone, tablet, and computer. The processes for the manufacturer of integrated circuit chips requires the use of clean rooms, areas with extremely low particulate matter in the air. These assembly lines are run with almost no human manufacturing actions required. In many ways automation is typical of many technologies in that it has improved our lives in many ways, but it also has eliminated jobs that people depended on to live. It has been titled creative destruction and has typically resulted in the creation of as many if not more new jobs along the way.These innovations are a threat to the livelihoods of many millions of Americans. This is why Yang would like to impose a value added tax to fund a $1000 a month stipend to help people pay for their living expenses.
The debate moderators immediately posed a question about automation and jobs to Eric Swallwell after Yang had finished explaining his UBI proposal. This had the potential to be very interesting since Swallwell represents a district in the San Francisco Bay area. He briefly mentioned that technology has created more jobs than it destroyed. He was quite clear that it must happen this way. All of this sounds good, but it showed a clear lack of thought about the risks of automation to permanently dislocate workers from the economy. The potential of automation to disrupt such a broad set of industries and eliminate jobs is real. Swallwell did mention that he would modernize schools, invest in communities, and value teachers and including those who work in poor neighborhoods. Unfortunately the debate format did not allow for Swallwell to go more in depth on his policies. I will delve into these broad stroke statements anyways. Modernizing schools and valuing teachers are important for forming the foundation of our future economy. There are notorious problems with teacher retention in this country that are based on pay and burn out due to stress. Improving the pool of teachers and retaining them in our schools will improve the education quality of the future workforce. Improving conditions for teachers is only half the solution. Modernizing our schools is vital so that students have the right skills for our modern economy. There is a massive need to update and add skills to the current K-12 curriculum. Our economy is in many ways being fueled by coding whether it be software or embedded programming that runs a plethora of devices. Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, the e-commerce systems that are disrupting traditional industries work on a backbone of people developing code. I would think that the policy wonks on both sides of the political spectrum fully understand this as an important issue, but clearly the current President has taken no overt publicly seen action to endorse this. More can and may be learned in future debates about what Eric Swallwell would like to implement if he is elected President.
Marianne Williamson in her answer to a question on healthcare called the current system sickness-care and then mentioned chronic diseases and chemical regulations. Her response may have sounded kooky and snake oil spiritualist, but it was not. Calling our healthcare system sickness-care is a topic that this blog post doesn't intend to delve into. This really should be discussed by people with real expertise in our current healthcare system. I do want to look at whether chemical and environmental regulations are impacting our rates of chronic disease. In the last ten years the U.S. has suffered from contaminated water in Flint, Hoosick Falls, and Parkersburg. There are chemicals which we know are carcinogens that have contaminated the environment in plenty of locations. These are typically associated with increased rates of cancer. After doing some research I did not find an article that clearly claims an association with chemicals and chronic diseases. There were articles discussing how to look into this issue in research that is being done. This doesn't mean that exposure to man made chemicals doesn't have an impact on chronic diseases. Chemical safety regulation is a complicated series of overlapping authorities in the federal government. Food, drugs, and medicines are regulated by the FDA. Chemicals in our environment are the responsibility of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). There are several other agencies who play minor roles in dealing with chemicals and potential pollution. Both the EPA and the FDA have been under continuous attack by the Trump administration in an effort to reduce and overturn regulations. Technology in general and the chemical industry are focused on developing products that solve a problem or provide a new service to their customer. We, our representative government, have passed laws to protect certain environmental factors that we have defined as important to our well being. The results are that the chemical industry in particular is limited in what it new products by the clean water and clean air act. These laws don't directly ban the production of any specific chemicals, but instead provide legal mechanisms for the government to regulate chemicals that are found to be dangerous in the environment. The relationship between profitable operation of chemical manufacturing and the responsible stewardship of the environment are an adversarial balancing act. Typically the EPA is the entity trying to rein in potential or known hazardous substances and enforce existing regulations. That Marianne Williamson brought up this small lesser issue in the breadth of the healthcare debate is important because the regulations that protect the general public's exposure to known hazards is being unraveled by the current administration's efforts. Additionally the EPA is being weakened by attacks on it's staff of scientists and scientific advisory bodies. This is intended to create the EPA is a weaker adversary to industry. I look forward to hearing the candidates for President elucidating their policies on this issue in future debates.
The issue of Chinese intellectual property theft was brought up in the debate. Intellectual Property, patents and trademarks, is a system that gives companies a limited period monopoly on a technology. This monopoly is what gives technology manufacturers a key advantage against rivals and maintains their profitability. Companies can take two different routes to monetizing their intellectual property. Companies can leverage the intellectual property to manufacture a product that they sell to their customer. The other alternative is that a company will license the intellectual property to other manufacturers for their products. Chinese firms have been known to build products that are the same or nearly equivalent to products that have been developed by American firms. This would be fine if the Chinese manufacturer were paying the American company to use the technology. Unfortunately this is not often the case. Additionally China has required American companies who want to sell their product to partner with Chinese firms in joint-ventures and share the intellectual property which is then stolen and the market for the American product is undercut by a multitude of Chinese manufacturers.
The candidates' responses were interesting in regards to this issue. Andrew Yang mentioned that this was a serious issue, but that the current tariffs levied by the Trump administration were hurting American manufacturers and farmers. Peter Buttiegieg when responding on this issue mentioned that the issue of intellectual property theft goes to a much deeper problem which is that China is developing technology for perfecting dictatorship. This is very interesting since in the second half of the 20th century America was clearly the most dominant player in advanced technology development, and it was used as an advantage in intelligence gathering. Buttiegieg also mentioned that if we don't get our act together they will run circles around us on artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence and the Chinese intellectual property theft are worthy of independent blog posts discussing each issue in more depth. Overall the two candidates who did discuss this issue showed an understanding of the issue, but there ability to articulate clear policies was limited by the debate format.
The one technology related issue that does seem to be on the minds of many voters is climate change. Among the candidates who were asked about this issue there was broad agreement to that re-entering the Paris climate agreement was an action they would take on day one. Kamala Harris specifically called it a climate crisis and mentioned her support of the green new deal. The green new deal is a broad set of plans for reducing emissions of green house gases, racial and social justice programs, and a federal jobs guarantee. The green new deal has been specifically crafted to meet the urgent emissions requirements outlined in recent UN reports on climate change. This set of policies faces many hurdles due to the extreme disruptive nature of the solutions that would be implemented. The governmental imposition of technologies and lifestyle changes will be resented by many who are recalcitrant to that sort of decision making. The most difficult part of the green new deal will be getting all the laws that will be required to pass both the House and Senate. The oil and gas industries that have the most to lose will put up a strong fight to this law which will imperil their future.
Pete Buttiegieg put forth that he has dealt with a 500 year and 1000 year floods in the last few years as mayor of South Bend. He proposed a carbon tax and rebate system to fight climate change. This type of system has been discussed for many years, but has never been implemented to my knowledge. The rebate effect solves the potential risk of angering many working class people who would be subject to the increased taxes, specifically on the gas they use to fuel their cars. One of the big problems with a carbon tax system is what should be the rate of the tax. Defining the price of carbon or a tax rate for carbon is exceedingly difficult without knowing how much carbon dioxide, the biggest green house gas,  will cause the most draconian of impacts. Setting a rate that would meet the UN climate reports and the Paris agreement levels would likely lead to major problems for the economy. This is probably best understood by the efforts California has taken using a cap and trade system. I found it particularly interesting that Buttiegieg would mention that soil management by farmers could be part of the solution. Buttiegieg proposed a Pittsburgh summit that would bring in local and state leaders as stakeholders in this issue. The summit proposal is a great tongue and check dig at Trump. The summit itself would be a very good idea since in the Trump administration states and cities have taken the lead in fighting climate change.
John Hickenlooper is proposing to take a more cooperative method to dealing with climate change. He proudly shared the achievements of his time as governor of Colorado. Colorado closed coal plants and replaced them with renewable sources. Coal fueled power plants have been economically unsustainable for the last several years due to the price of renewable sources and natural gas dropping significantly. Colorado also has a favourable renewable energy capabilities that they are now cheaper than coal power plants. Hickenlooper also talked up the electric vehicle recharging network that was created in Colorado. Hickenlooper clearly has a grasp on the biggest players as he stated that the three biggest emitters are U.S., China, and concrete exhalation. His biggest proposal to fight climate change is to bring people together to work on solving the problem. To support his view he discussed his successful effort to impose the first methane emission regulations. In order to achieve this he brought the oil and gas industry and environmentalists together to achieve a compromise. The compromise between stakeholders scenario sounds great but has several potential pitfalls. Gas producers have a vested interest in reducing methane leaks because they can then sell the methane to increase their profits. The latest UN report on climate change states that we need to reduce our emissions by half in the next 12 years and achieve net zero by 2050. I have trouble seeing the oil and gas industry willingly sitting down with environmentalists to discussing climate change regulations when their very existence is in peril. Getting a deal is easy to do when both sides are able to gain from compromise. The latest scientific assessments are telling law makers that we need to eliminate CO2 emissions rapidly. The most likely outcome of an attempt at a grand bargain will obstruction and delay by the fossil fuel industry with the hope of maintaining their profitability as long as possible. I would like to thank Hickenlooper for bringing up the fact that no one is discussing plans to replace the emissions of heavy industries. Unfortunately he left this specific part of climate change as a query rather than proposing a solution.
Joe Biden opted to answer the climate change question by claiming that the Obama-Biden administration drove down the price of wind and solar. This broad statement sounds good, but there was no actual policy or policies that he cited to back up this statement. It should be pointed out that in the Obama administration timeline the cost of solar power did drop, but this was mostly fueled by the investment China made in manufacturing solar panels and their subsequent flooding of the market. Biden did propose building 500000 recharging stations for electric vehicles. This would be a great step as long as there is an equivalent increase in renewable energy to meet the energy demand from each of these stations. At best this will help allow for market penetration of electric vehicles. He also proposed 400 million dollars in research and development money for green technology. More research and development funding will allow the advancement of green technology, but this seems like a low value of funding when compared to Elizabeth Warren's proposal. A good question is to consider how much should we be spending on research and development to avert the worst of climate change.
The second night of debate did discuss technology more often, but the debate format was not conducive to a quality discussion of candidates policies. Hopefully future debates will allow for the voters to learn more about each candidates position. Any links to a candidates website are not an endorsement, but provided for the reader to learn more.