Climate change 'winners' may owe financial compensation to polluters

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Research News

Climate change is generally portrayed as an environmental and societal threat with entirely negative consequences. However, some sectors of the global economy may actually end up benefiting.

New economic and philosophical research argues that policymakers must consider both the beneficial effects of climate change to "climate winners" as well as its costs in order to appropriately incentivize actions that are best for society and for the environment.

The study by researchers from Princeton University, University College Cork, and HEC Montréal appears to be the first to develop a systematic, ethical framework for addressing climate winners -- as well as those harmed -- using financial transfers.

Their approach, called "Polluter Pays, Then Receives," requires polluters to first compensate those most harmed by climate change. Subsequently, polluters would be eligible to receive compensation from those who are passively benefiting from climate change.

Published in Economics & Philosophy, the article emphasizes that, through climate change, greenhouse gas emitters affect a variety of individuals and groups both positively and negatively at different regional or sectoral scales, sometimes at the expense of other groups -- what economists call "externalities."

"With a global issue like climate change, it's difficult for people to make decisions that account for the harm or benefit their actions cause, because those effects aren't directly or proportionally felt by that actor," said study co-author Kian Mintz-Woo, a former postdoctoral research associate at the Princeton University Center for Human Values and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. "Our research argues that payments are one way to help correct incentives: Harms should be redressed, and then beneficial actions should be rewarded."

Mintz-Woo recently joined the department of Philosophy and the Environmental Research Institute at University College Cork.

While globally the negative consequences of climate change are expected to far outweigh the benefits, some groups or places may experience net benefits. For example, countries at far northern latitudes or specific industries may see improved agricultural conditions, additional tourism, or lower energy costs.

"Not systematically considering or accounting for beneficial climate effects makes it easier for climate impact skeptics to think that climate change discussions are oversimplified or alarmist," said study co-author Justin Leroux, professor of applied economics at HEC Montréal and CIRANO research fellow. "Another motivation of our study was to address the unfairness that arises when some benefit from climate change while others are suffering harm. It's a question of solidarity -- both sharing benefits that weren't truly earned and compensating losses that weren't the fault of those harmed."

The authors say this compensation approach could be experimented with at a regional or national level before being introduced globally. They explore how it might be implemented in a federal nation using the example of Canada. A national carbon tax could be used to collect funds from greenhouse gas emitters. Those revenues would first and foremost be used to compensate victims. In addition, a corporate tax would be levied on the sectors of the economy that gain passively from climate change, like tourism, which could benefit from more tourists taking advantage of longer summers in Arctic regions. Revenue from the additional corporate tax would be shared with the greenhouse gas emitters. Introducing a policy to reward emitters may sound surprising, but the authors emphasize that those emitters would first need to pay for their harms before receiving any benefit payments.

"Payments from passive winners to polluters could either help the polluters more fully compensate the groups that have been harmed by their actions or help fund the polluters' own climate adaptation responses," Mintz-Woo said.

###

"What do climate change winners owe, and to whom?" was published online Feb. 23. The article is available open access, thanks to support from the Princeton University Library Open Access Fund Program. The research is co-authored by Kian Mintz-Woo (University College Cork and Princeton University) and Justin Leroux (HEC Montréal and CIRANO).  

ISRAEL DEMOCRACY PROTESTS

Student protestor Bar Pakula vows to continue despite multiple arrests

Story by By I. H. MINTZ • The Jerusalem Post

Saturday, July 22,2023

Bar Pakula.© (photo credit: I.H. Mintz)

Bar Pakula, one of the leaders of the student protests, appeared vigilant and prepared to continue his fight for democracy, following his arrest late Thursday night outside of Hashalom Train Station in Tel Aviv, marking the third time in three weeks he’s been arrested for “disruption to order.”

“The situation is so fragile and critical right now,” Pakula, 27, said on Friday. “[The protests are] an epic show of civic power” to combat the coalition’s intent to finalize legislation that would revoke the ability of the High Court of Justice to justify decisions based on the reasonableness clause. The Knesset is attempting to finalize legislation before they go on break on July 31.

Pakula added that “the basic DNA of this country is on the line… its democratic [ideals], separation of government entities, and a certain place for [the Jewish] religion.”

Pakula was one of several arrested Thursday night outside of Hashalom and was later released.

He explained that “I was one of the people [directing people] and shouting to make people go places. One of the senior officers came running to me [and said], ‘you made them go down [to block the Ayalon Highway],’ which is a big accusation for one person [to accomplish] in a crowd of thousands.”



Bar Pakula. (credit: I.H. Mintz)© Provided by The Jerusalem PostBar Pakula. (credit: I.H. Mintz)

The student protesters gathered at Habima Square earlier in the evening before making their way to Hashalom Station, where hundreds gathered following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech, which further inflamed public opposition.


What did Netanyahu say?

In the speech, Netanyahu faulted IDF reservists for threatening to cease volunteer duties and chastised the opposition for what he called its failure to come to the negotiation table on judicial reform talks.

Pakula said that “we’re not going in a good direction right now,” referring to the introduction of water cannons at the protests – a tactic that hadn’t been used against demonstrators until recent weeks.

“The government can’t go and do whatever they want – we’re seeing [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir trying to pass a law for administrative detention [in response to any] ‘disruption to order’ – the general reason they arrest protesters,” in effect giving him the ability to arrest those deemed unsafe to the public sphere.

“The government can’t go and do whatever they want."Bar Pakula

The legislation was presented in the context of acts of terrorism, not public protests.

Pakula was not a political activist prior to joining the protests in January, following the election of the new coalition. After the election, friends turned against him due to their political differences, a significant reckoning where he felt like his only options were to leave the country or stay and fight for his vision of the identity of the nation.

“These protests give them [the groups participating in civil disobedience] the backing and feeling that what they’re doing is important for the country, and that are hundreds of thousands of Israelis that are standing behind them giving them the energy to do what they believe in.

“The way we come out from these protests is going to dictate how this country looks and whether or not you can live freely and be who you are, whether you’re Jewish or not, whether you’re a woman or a man or transgender or whatever your sexual orientation – all of that is on the line.”

Pakula recognizes that the police must continue to do their job while maintaining that “every time there is a call to protest, there is a big emphasis on non-violence. We have no reason to be violent, and that’s not what we believe in. The police may be acting more harshly, but there is a very strong limit to what [police] can do with public legitimacy. In the end, they’re doing their job and are under a lot of pressure.”

Police did not respond to a request for comment.

Alberta government names five new members to Preston Manning-led COVID review panel
PRIVATIZE HEALTHCARE PANEL
Fri, February 17, 2023 



EDMONTON — The Alberta government has named five members to a COVID-19 review panel led by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning, one of whom was recently fired along with the rest of the governing board of Alberta Health Services.

Jack Mintz joins Dr. Martha Fulford, Michel Kelly-Gagnon, Dr. Rob Tanguay and Jack Major on the Public Health Emergencies Governance Review panel.

“Albertans can have confidence Alberta’s pandemic response will be reviewed by these medical, policy, legal and economic experts so our province can better respond to the next public health emergency,” Smith said in a statement Friday.

MR. NEOLIBERAL
Mintz is the president’s fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and advises and writes on tax, business and health policy.

He and the board were fired by Smith in November. She said they failed Albertans during the pandemic by failing to scale up hospital capacity as promised, forcing the government to impose what Smith has termed freedom-busting health restrictions.

The board members were replaced by an administrator. In an opinion piece published in the Financial Post in November, Mintz wrote that he was OK with the firing because the changes represent a necessary jump-start to achieve true reform in health-care delivery.

Major is a former Supreme Court judge and Kelly-Gagnon is president of the Montreal Economic Institute. RIGHT WING THINK TANK LIKE FRASER INSTITUTE

Tanguay is a psychiatrist and University of Calgary professor focusing on disability and rehabilitation.

Fulford is chief of medicine at McMaster University Medical Centre in Hamilton and focuses on infectious diseases. She challenged the efficacy of some health restrictions during the pandemic.

The panel is not only looking at government decision-making, but also its effects on jobs, children, mental health and protection of rights and freedoms. It is to report back by Nov. 15.

The bulk of the panel's work will be reviewing legislation, regulations and ministerial orders, but it will also take feedback online.

The budget is $2 million. Manning, who was announced as chair a month ago, is to be paid $253,000.

Manning and Smith have been critical of government-imposed health restrictions such as masking, gathering rules and vaccine mandates during the pandemic.

Smith has questioned the efficacy of the methods and their long-term effects on household incomes, the economy and mental health. She has promised health restrictions and vaccine mandates would have no role in any future COVID-19 response in Alberta.

The Opposition New Democrats have labelled the panel a political sop to Smith’s far-right supporters angry over COVID-19 restrictions, and have promised to cancel it should they win the May 29 provincial election.

“This panel is a brutal waste of Alberta taxpayers’ money," said NDP health critic David Shepherd.

"Preston Manning has already reached his own conclusions, and based on the panellists, it looks like it’s headed toward whatever outcome Danielle Smith and the UCP are looking for. An Alberta NDP government will put an end to this sham panel."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 17, 2023.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

Carbon capture and storage: where should the world store CO₂? It’s a moral dilemma


Boundary Dam power station in Saskatchewan, Canada, claims to be the world’s first coal plant with incorporated carbon capture and storage. SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CCS  

Orjan Ellingvag/Alamy Stock Photo

Kian Mintz-Woo 

December 6, 2021

The recent Glasgow climate pact committed 197 countries to “phas[ing] down unabated coal”. Unabated coal refers to when power stations or factories burn coal without capturing and storing the carbon dioxide (CO₂) generated.

Because the world has made such little progress in eliminating coal, oil and fossil gas, climate modellers foresee some use of carbon capture and storage as necessary to reach zero emissions in enough time to avert catastrophic warming. The technology to capture carbon is in development, but one burning question remains: where on Earth should we store all that carbon?

Different methods of carbon capture will take place at different sites. Some involve absorbing emissions immediately after burning fossil fuels in chimneys and smokestacks where the CO₂ is highly concentrated. Other methods capture carbon directly from the air, either by using chemical reactions that bind the carbon using lots of energy or by growing carbon-hungry plants which can be burned for energy and the resulting emissions subsequently captured.

In new research, myself and environmental engineer Joe Lane at Princeton University in the US argued that, regardless of the method, leaving decisions about where to store carbon to commercial entities would mean avoiding an important moral dilemma.

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Read more: We can't let markets decide the future of removing carbon from the atmosphere

Funding for carbon capture and storage is insufficient. At the current rate of deployment, 700 million tonnes of CO₂ storage capacity will be added by 2050 – 10% of what is required.

Countries would have to massively ramp up investment to be compliant with the Paris aqgreement’s target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Some of this money would be public funding, and people would reasonably expect it to fund projects which are morally sound.

On the one hand, it might be deemed important to develop storage sites with the best prospects for storing lots of greenhouse gas for the longest duration. This argument maintains that the most important consideration for deploying carbon capture and storage is making the largest possible contribution to arresting climate change.

To give carbon storage sites the greatest chance of success, it makes sense to develop them in places where the geology has been thoroughly explored and where there is lots of relevant expertise. This would imply pumping carbon into underground storage sites in northern Europe, the Middle East and the US, where companies have spent centuries looking for and extracting fossil fuels. Storing carbon is roughly the reverse of extracting it from the ground, and there is an opportunity for workers in the oil and gas industry to lend their skills and expertise to this endeavour.

Some US companies have been extracting oil for well over a century. 

Alizada Studios/Shutterstock

On the other hand, it might be important to develop storage sites in economies where the current and future demand for carbon capture and storage is greatest. These competing aims pull in different directions. The regions with the best prospects are not often those with the greatest expected need.

Developing storage sites in economies where expected demand for carbon capture is highest overwhelmingly favours developing regions of Asia. In India and China, for instance, coal power stations and cement plants are expensive to decommission and will need lots of carbon capture and storage capacity to decarbonise. If developing regions are expected to decarbonise without sufficient support to roll out carbon capture and storage, it could mean they have to throttle development to reduce emissions.

There are no easy answers in this debate. Increasing carbon capture and storage capacity as quickly as possible could benefit future generations by reducing the severity of climate change. So, you could argue that developing the most promising sites in Europe is the best way forward. But directing investment for storage facilities from wealthy countries to developing regions could help address the debt the former owes the latter for causing the brunt of the climate crisis.

World leaders should recognise this moral dilemma and consider the choices with urgency. The need to remove and safely store carbon becomes more severe by the day. Given the time and costs involved in developing storage sites, and the real possibility that the storage sites may not be sufficient for the carbon countries emit, this is a question which cannot be delayed.

Author

Kian Mintz-Woo
Lecturer in Philosophy, Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork
Disclosure statement
Kian Mintz-Woo is a guest researcher at the Equity and Justice group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Partners

University College Cork provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

Housing Bubble, Debt Boom

Bubble to burst?: Prices have gone too high, too fast, pessimists say, while optimists insist the increases have been restrained compared to other global hot spots

What is driving the current economy in North America is NOT manufacturing and industrial productivity but consumption. When consumption drives the market it sets up the market for collapse, as pre-WWII economics remind us. The Austrian School of Economics dominated economic thinking then too; " Taxes collected undermine productivity and growth".

Except that taxes have nothing to do with the failure of business to reinvest its profits into manufacturing as I have already pointed out. In North America the investment boom is being driven by business debt, investment in money markets and high interest financial schemes, and by personal debt. Taxes have nothing to do with it.

We aren't in a Housing Boom we are in a Debt Boom, negative productive growth in favour of growth in interest and credit. So when the economists complain about declining productivity, what they really are talking about is not worker productivity but lack of investment going into manufacturing and the industrial sector, cause all that money is circulating in credit and mortgages. Its what is supporting the largest economy in the world, the USA.

And its impact is global as the housing boom reflects the cashing out of savings and the creation of massive personal debt. Personal debt is the source of the current capitalist boom. And that was the case just before the Great Depression.

The Canadian housing market has indeed lagged the global real estate explosion of the past few years. From 1997 to the first quarter of 2005, house prices surged 244% in South Africa, 114% in Australia, 154% in Britain and 145% in Spain, according to a survey by The Economist magazine. Over the same period, U.S. prices rose a more modest 73% and Canadian prices a mere 43%. Since then, British and Australian prices have eased but North American prices have continued to climb. Historically low interest rates have prompted Canadians to take on larger and larger mortgages and to borrow more against their houses.
Personal savings levels plunging to Depression-era lows
Our savings rate is now in negative territory, meaning we spend more than we bring in. That suggests that when price gains do tail off, the adjustment could be harsh for consumer spending and the economy.

Canadian Consumer Confidence Drops to Lowest Since Sept. 2001

Oct. 6 -- Canadian consumer confidence dropped to its lowest since September 2001 last month as fewer households said it's a good time to buy homes and cars, a Conference Board of Canada poll showed.The findings are similar to those of the Decima-Investors Group Index of Canadian Consumer Confidence, released Tuesday, showing a decline to the lowest level in four years, with Canadian results mirroring a similar drop south of the border.The earlier Decima-Investors Group survey found Canadians had a gloomier outlook on family finances, job market prospects and big-ticket spending. The private group's index, which stood at 87.9 in May, dropped 13 points by September to 75. "The spike in gasoline prices following hurricane Katrina left less money in consumers' pockets and clearly affected confidence in September," Paul Darby, deputy chief economist, said in a release."Even so, this is a major decline in consumer confidence and will likely affect spending and Canada's overall economic performance for the next six months."

Ottawa's new, improved mantra: 'productivity'-Cabinet sees future prosperity threatened, writes GORDON PITTS in the first of a three-part series

The simplistic approach is that Canadian companies have to innovate more, and that is often equated with research and development -- another area in which Canada is perceived as a global laggard. Only a small minority of companies in Canada actually perform R&D, and Canada already has an attractive tax incentive program to spur pure research. Yet until very recently, Canada has not done well in investing in machinery and equipment compared with other G7 nations. Paradoxically, this was happening when companies were awash in profits. Investment sentiment has improved in the past year, perhaps because the higher value of the Canadian dollar makes U.S.-made equipment much more affordable. But the record of the past decade has been generally weak, particularly in crucial high technology. The Information Technology Association of Canada recently pointed out that Canadian companies invest only 43 per cent of what U.S. companies spend per worker in information and communications technology. There are other problems. Canada is in the midst of an income trust boom, that according to Mr. Mintz militates against productivity growth. The high distributions accorded unitholders detract from a company's ability to pour cash back into equipment and machinery, or to use funds to expand or acquire other firms. "This is not a good strategy to be on top of the world," says Mr. Mintz, who is particularly appalled by the number of growth companies that are doing income trusts. "The basic assumptions are you've eliminated tax and you're not doing much investment," Mr. Mintz sighs. Even the windfall of higher energy prices is not a big productivity booster. Upward spikes simply spur companies to start bringing marginal fields on-stream. These may generate strong profits in the short term, but according to the economists' strict measure of volume per working hour, these fields are not highly productive.

Whenever I hear the word productivity I reach for my Das Kapital. Of course when capitalists talk about productivity it means outsourcing, job cuts, and of course the inevitable....wait for it......tax cuts. Yet tax cuts have done nothing in the past decade to promote re-investment in fixed capital, that is techonology, plant and infrastructure, or in variablbe capital, labour training, skills innovation.

Nope the money made in profits, and tax breaks have gone into the stock market, real estate, money markers and other capital investments, in order to make profit.
After all capitalism is about profit not production or productivity.

In this era of finance capital, productivity is about how much interest can be made on the dollar not how the dollar can be invested for our long term interest. No amount of tax cuts will improve productivity if profits are NOT invested in assets, fixed and variable capital, but instead invested in profit making financial markets. $152 billion in tax cuts federally, not including provincial tax cuts, and still productivity lags.

Tax cuts do not insure that captialists will reinvest in improving their products but it does insure they will improve their bottomline and line their shareholders pockets. In fact despite the billions in tax cuts Corporate Canada has set up Income Trusts to stash its cash in and avoid paying taxes. Corporate Canada could pay zero in taxes and it would not assure us of increased productivity in anything but coupon clipping.

Sugar in India’s Key Growing Areas Under Threat From Poor Rain

Pratik Parija
Fri, August 25, 2023 





(Bloomberg) -- Sugar crops in some of India’s major growing regions are in desperate need of rain as drier conditions threaten the production outlook, which may place more pressure on containing rising food costs.

Rainfall is badly needed to replenish groundwater used for irrigating crops in Maharashtra, Sanjay Khatal, the managing director of the Maharashtra State Co-Operative Sugar Factories Federation Ltd., said in an interview. The state is India’s biggest sugar producer, accounting for about 37% of output.

“At the moment, the crop is at risk, but if rains improve in the balance period of the monsoon season, then the situation will take a turn for the better,” he said. Some parts of Maharashtra have received as much as 20% less rain than normal since the start of the season, according to the weather bureau.

A smaller crop could prompt the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to curb exports to prevent a surge in domestic prices ahead of elections early next year, similar to the measures India has already implemented on rice. Maharashtra’s Khatal said it’s too early to make a prediction about sugar production given there is more than a month before the monsoon ends.

The Indian government will make a decision about overseas sugar shipments for 2023-24 when actual estimates of total production are available, according to the food ministry.

The South Asian nation is the world’s second biggest producer after Brazil, and any production shortfall and subsequent export ban could reverberate across markets, boosting sugar futures traded in New York and London. India allowed mills to export about 6.1 million tons in 2022-23, compared with 11 million tons a year earlier after late rains reduced yields and cut output.

The New York contract, which climbed for a third day after reversing losses, is headed for a 2.3% weekly gain.

“There aren’t any talks with the government on sugar exports at present,” said Aditya Jhunjhunwala, president of the Indian Sugar Mills Association. “We will assess the crop after monsoon season is over in September and approach the government on allowing exports after that,” he said, adding there will be enough supplies next season to meet domestic demand.


The group estimates production at 31.7 million tons in 2023-24 and domestic consumption at 27.5 million tons, leaving a surplus of 4.2 million tons. India’s planted sugar cane area was at 5.61 million hectares (13.9 million acres) as of Friday, little changed from a year earlier, according to the farm ministry.

Lower Rainfall

Even though 94% of India’s sugar cane area is irrigated, rains are needed during the monsoon from June to September to fill dams, ponds, wells and replenish ground water. Some areas of Karnataka have received as much as 27% less rainfall so far, while in Uttar Pradesh, rains have been mixed.

Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka account for more than 80% of India’s sugar cane production, according to the agriculture ministry. As of Thursday, water storage in the country’s 146 main reservoirs was 21% less than a year earlier, according to the state-run Central Water Commission.

The harvest in Karnataka, the third biggest producer, will likely fall by 20% in the year starting October due to less rain, according to Shivanand H. Kalakeri, the state’s commissioner for cane development and director of sugar.

“We have asked mills to start a little late next season as the crop needs some more time to mature,” Kalakeri said. Factories normally begin crushing in the middle of October, Kalakeri said.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/08/worlds-largest-sugar-producer-india-to.html

https://sidneymintz.net/sugar.php

Sugar - Sidney Mintz 

Sugar, or sucrose (C12H22O11), is manufactured photosynthetically by green plants. We humans can't make sugar. The best we can do is to extract it, and change ...

SWEETNESS AND POWER 

MINTZ.pdf 

Canada's 'generous' COVID-19 income supports vastly outpaced other developed nations: OECD report

The report shows household incomes in Canada increased by 11% in the second quarter of 2020, despite a more than 10% contraction in the economy over the same time

Author of the article:Jesse Snyder
Publishing date:Nov 14, 2020 • Last Updated 1 day ago •

The Liberal government introduced a number of emergency programs early in the COVID-19 pandemic, widely supported by businesses and the general public.

 PHOTO BY LARS HAGBERG/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES/FILE

OTTAWA — Federal spending on financial supports during the height of the global pandemic in Canada greatly outpaced that of other developed countries, enough to actually raise household incomes at a time when the economy was in free fall.

A new report by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) shows that household incomes in Canada increased by 11 per cent in the second quarter of 2020, while incomes in other developed nations including the U.K., France and Germany decreased. The boost came despite a more than 10 per cent contraction in the Canadian economy over the same period, shortly after strict lockdowns were introduced across the country.

The figures underscore the immense scale of the Liberal government’s emergency aid spending, prompting economists to contemplate what level of fiscal response is necessary to cushion the Canadian public against economic fallout.

“It raises a very serious question about whether we overdid it,” said Jack Mintz, economist at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. “It’s one thing to help people bridge the pandemic because they lost income. But it’s another thing to actually make them richer.”

The report by the OECD comes weeks after another report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that Canada’s deficit as a percentage of GDP will be the single-largest of any country in 2021, at 19.9 per cent. The U.S. (18.7 per cent) and U.K. (16.5 per cent) are expected to run the next-largest shortfalls.

Experts are widely in agreement that some level of fiscal support was needed in order to keep businesses afloat and replace the lost income of unemployed people. But Mintz and others have long suggested that federal support programs could have already been trimmed back as a way to incentivize workers and not avoid overspending.

“In terms of lost income, the appropriate thing is probably to be flat,” he said. “But certainly not increasing.”

\

The Liberal government introduced a number of emergency programs early in the pandemic, widely supported by businesses and the general public. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) gave unemployed people $2,000 per month, while the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) paid up to 75 per cent of wages for businesses as a way to keep people employed.

Combined, the two projects will cost over $150 billion by the end of December, according to government estimates. The federal deficit is projected to reach $350 billion in 2021, then decline sharply in the following years.

“Canada was more generous than most other countries in providing quick stimulus,” said Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at CIBC.

Economists are broadly in agreement that current spending measures will need to be wound down sooner rather than later, or risk slowing an eventual recovery. Ottawa in late summer made moves to reduce payments under the CERB from $2,000 to $1,600 per month, but ultimately abandoned those plans after facing pressure from the NDP.

It has since transitioned to the new $2,000-per-month Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB), which Shenfeld said includes some provisions that should better incentivize return to work.

“As the economy improves, ideally, we want to gradually make unemployment benefits less available and less tempting, and build in more incentive to accept to work,” he said.


It’s one thing to help people bridge the pandemic... But it’s another thing to actually make them richer


Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has offered few details about how she will sketch out a return to pre-pandemic budgets, and has declined to provide an updated fiscal anchor in her upcoming budget update.

In her first major speech as finance minister in late October, Freeland did hint that spending would eventually be wound down.

“Our fiscally expansive approach to fighting the coronavirus cannot and will not be infinite,” she said.

The OECD report also had the United States posting a rise in household incomes in the second quarter at 10 per cent, largely due to the emergency CARES Act passed by Donald Trump in April. However, the OECD said the bump is likely to be “temporary” as new fiscal spending plans remain stuck in Congress.

Other countries posting higher incomes included Ireland (3.6 per cent), Australia (2.7 per cent) and Finland (1.1 per cent). Italy saw a seven per cent drop, while household incomes in the U.K. dropped 3.5 per cent.

COMMODITY FETISH

Sotheby’s hopes for record sale of ancient Hebrew Bible

By ILAN BEN ZION

today

A member of staff shows the Hebrew Bible "Codex Sassoon", that dates back more than 1,000 years, on display during a media preview of Sotheby's auction, in London, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023. The piece has an estimated price of US$30-50 million and will go on auction on May in New York. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
THE HAIRSTYLISTS BIBLE


JERUSALEM (AP) — One of the oldest surviving biblical manuscripts, a nearly complete 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible, could soon be yours — for a cool $30 million.

The Codex Sassoon, a leather-bound, handwritten parchment tome containing almost the entirety of the Hebrew Bible, is set to go on the block at Sotheby’s in New York in May. Its anticipated sale speaks to the still bullish market for art, antiquities and ancient manuscripts even in a worldwide bear economy.

Sotheby’s is drumming up interest in hopes of enticing institutions and collectors to bite. It has put the price tag at an eye-watering $30 million to $50 million.

On Wednesday, Tel Aviv’s ANU Museum of the Jewish People opened a week-long exhibition of the manuscript, part of a whirlwind worldwide tour of the artifact in the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States before its expected sale, on Wednesday.

“There are three ancient Hebrew Bibles from this period,” said Yosef Ofer, a professor of Bible studies at Israel’s Bar Ilan University: the Codex Sassoon and Aleppo Codex from the 10th century, and the Leningrad Codex, from the early 11th century.

Only the Dead Sea Scrolls and a handful of fragmentary early medieval texts are older, and “an entire Hebrew Bible is relatively rare,” he said.

Starting a few centuries before the Codex Sassoon’s creation, Jewish scholars known as Masoretes started codifying oral traditions of how to properly spell, pronounce, punctuate and chant the words of Judaism’s holiest book. Unlike Torah scrolls, where the Hebrew letters are devoid of vowels and punctuation, these manuscripts contained extensive annotation instructing readers how to recite the words correctly.

Precisely where and when the Codex Sassoon was made remains uncertain. Sharon Liberman Mintz, a senior Judaica specialist at Sotheby’s, said that radiocarbon dating of the parchment gave an estimated date of 880 to 960. The codex’s writing style suggests its creator was an unspecified early 10th-century scribe in Egypt or the Levant.

“It’s like the emergence of the biblical text as we know it today,” Mintz said. “It’s so foundational not only for Judaism, but also for world culture.”

Though it’s certainly ancient and rare, scholars say the Codex Sassoon doesn’t match the pedigree and quality of its contemporary — the Aleppo Codex.

“Any Masoretic scholar in their right mind would take the Aleppo Codex over the Sassoon Codex, without any regret or hesitation,” said Kim Phillips, a Bible expert at the Cambridge University Library. He said the scribal quality was “surprisingly sloppy” compared to its counterpart.

The Aleppo Codex, dated to around 930, has been considered the gold standard of the Masoretic Bibles for around 1,000 years. The Codex Sassoon’s margins contain an annotation from a later scholar who says he checked its text against the Aleppo Codex — referring to the manuscript by the Arabic title a-Taj, “the Crown.”

“The Aleppo Codex is more precise than the Sassoon Codex, there’s no doubt,” Ofer said. “But because it’s missing (a third of its pages), in those parts that are absent, there is great significance to this manuscript.” The Codex Sassoon’s 792 pages make up around 92% of the Hebrew Bible.

These venerable manuscripts were protected and treasured by Syrian Jewish communities for centuries until the 20th century. How the Sassoon Codex survived the ages is an epic in its own right.

A note on the manuscript attest to its owners in centuries past: A man named Khalaf ben Abraham gave it to Isaac ben Ezekiel al-Attar, who gave it to his sons Ezekiel and Maimon.

It later migrated east to the town of Makisin in what’s today northeast Syria, where it was dedicated to a synagogue in the 13th century. Sometime in the following decades, the synagogue was destroyed and the codex entrusted to Salama ibn Abi al-Fakhr until the synagogue was rebuilt.

It never was rebuilt, but the book survived.

Its whereabouts for the next 500 years remain uncertain until it resurfaced in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929, and was bought by a legendary collector of Jewish manuscripts whose name it still bears.

David Solomon Sassoon was a Bombay-born son of an Iraqi Jewish business magnate who filled his London home with a massive collection of Jewish manuscripts.

“His capacity was astounding, both in terms of number but also in terms of what he was able to find,” said Raquel Ukeles, head of collections at Israel’s National Library.

Sassoon roved across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa buying up old books, and by his death in 1942, he had amassed over 1,200 manuscripts.

Sassoon’s estate was broken up after he died and the codex was sold by Sotheby’s in Zurich in 1978 to the British Rail Pension Fund, which had started investing in art several years earlier, for around $320,000.

The pension fund flipped the Codex Sassoon 11 years later for 10 times its hammer price. Jacqui Safra, a banker and art collector, bought it in 1989 for $3.19 million and is now putting it up for auction.

If the target price is realized, the Codex Sassoon could not only eclipse the most expensive Jewish document ever sold — the 2021 sale of the Luzzatto Machzor, a 14th-century prayerbook, for $8.3 million. It also could break the record for the priciest historical document ever sold at public auction. That honor is currently held by a 1787 copy of the U.S. Constitution sold in 2021 for $43 million.

Yoel Finkelman, a former curator of Judaica at Israel’s National Library, said that prices for Judaica manuscripts have skyrocketed in recent years, but Sotheby’s proposed range is “a different league.”

Few institutions, and only a small handful of ultrawealthy collectors, could afford such a price tag. There is precedent, however, of museums joining forces to buy prized manuscripts or philanthropists donating their purchases to libraries and other bodies.

Ukeles said that the National Library managed to purchase seven of Sassoon’s manuscripts when his collection was auctioned off in the 1970s, “but this one got away. And so for us, this is an opportunity to bring this great treasure home.”

WHERE ARE YOUR WHITE GLOVES

TO PROTECT THE PAGES?!!!!

Sotheby's is auctioning off what it describes as "the earliest, most 

complete Hebrew Bible," in May.

At auction, the Codex is expected to fetch between $30 and $40 million. 

Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

In 1929, the Codex was acquired by collector David Solomon Sassoon, 

for which it is named. 

The Codex Sassoon will be on display at the ANU Museum

 of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv from March 22-29.
Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI | License Photo

Jack Mintz: Don’t solve investment woes on workers’ backs

Opinion by Jack M. Mintz •

In the past few weeks, I have attended four meetings in which Canadian business leaders pointed to the lack of capital to fund projects in Canada. These entrepreneurs were not the ones you would expect, like oil and gas producers. Instead, they were from companies in tech, renewable energy and critical mining — who you would think would have no trouble attracting funds, given the heaps of government handouts these days. But even these companies are looking to invest outside Canada, especially in the United States, with its booming US$25-trillion economy.

I heard many reasons as to why Canada is out of favour these days. Miners referred to labour shortages, regulations and unsettled treaty issues with First Nations that make it hard to build anything. Startups say innovation hubs lack connections with venture capitalists. Several complained that big Canadian banks lack enthusiasm for investment in our slowing economy. Investors are also concerned about deficit spending, uncompetitive tax policies and scant political interest in private-sector investment.

No one knows exactly why investors are so turned off Canada but, with real per capita GDP essentially flat for eight years, our economy seems to be as stuck “as a painted ship upon a painted ocean” (to borrow Coleridge’s phrase from the Ancient Mariner). This week, however, an old guard of Canada’s business community says it knows what’s wrong: too much pension money is invested internationally. In a full-page newspaper ad, they pressed governments “to amend the rules governing pension funds to encourage them to invest in Canada.” They should do so because pension funds would not exist “without government sponsorship and considerable tax assistance.”

This policy prescription is as smart as a bag of hammers. Canada will not improve its business environment by going back to an old form of capital controls. After years of debate, in 2005 we finally abolished foreign property rules restricting pension and RRSP funds to holding no more than 30 per cent of their assets in shares and bonds issued by non-resident entities. We abolished it for a simple reason: to enable employees to get better returns on their retirement assets by diversifying internationally.

That’s exactly what happened after the rule was removed. According to OECD statistics , Canadian pension funds increased the foreign share of their assets from 26 per cent in 2005 to 35 per cent in 2020. (That last figure jumped to 47 per cent in 2021, not because of a major shift in pension plan behaviour but due to a break in the series due to a redesign of the quarterly survey — a crucial point missed by the National Bank of Canada in a memo suggesting pension funds are abandoning Canada.)

Our pension funds’ 48 per cent foreign share in 2022 makes them more internationally diversified than some countries’ funds, less diversified than others’. Funds in the Netherlands hold fully 85 per cent of their assets outside that country. In Italy the foreign share is 68 per cent. In New Zealand it’s 58 per cent; in Switzerland, 38 per cent. Unfortunately, the OECD does not provide numbers for the U.S. and Australia.

Canadian markets account for only about three per cent of the global equity market. So you might argue our pension funds should be a lot more diversified than they are today. Many investors have a “home bias” that favours putting their money in domestic companies they know better (or think they know better). But Canadian fund managers are accustomed to operating globally, so, if anything, our funds probably aren’t diversified enough.

Over the last few decades, we have gradually abandoned regulation of pension plan performance. That hasn’t prevented the World Bank from congratulating us for pension funds that are the envy of the world. In 2017 it wrote: “Over the past three decades, a ‘Canadian model’ of public pension has emerged that combines independent governance, professional in-house investment management, scale, and extensive geographic and asset-class diversification.”

Tax assistance to pension (and RRSP) funds should not be held over pension managers’ heads to force them away from international diversification. In fact, it can be argued there is no “tax assistance” at all. Pension contributions are indeed deductible from taxable income. But that’s not tax favouritism. It merely prevents the double taxation of savings since pension benefits withdrawn from the plan, including accumulated returns, are fully taxed (as they should be). Taxing both returns within the pension plan and withdrawals would tax savers more heavily than non-savers, which would be neither fair nor good policy.

Restricting their pension funds’ international diversification would cost Canadian savers the opportunity to earn the higher returns available from investing in companies like Nvidia and Microsoft. And if pension funds are forced to hold mainly domestic assets, Canadian businesses will have less incentive to improve their productivity.

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The solution to Canada’s investment malaise is to adopt policies that improve, not worsen, the return to investment in this country. We should not try to offset the effects of unwise federal regulatory and tax policies by saddling hard-working Canadians with inferior pensions later in life.

Financial Post

CONSERVATIVE ALBERTA ECONOMIST 
Jack Mintz: The real climate policy question — why is Trudeau's carbon tax so low?

ASKS A GOOD QUESTION OF THE TORIES

THEY HAVE NO CARBON TAX PLAN

Opinion by Jack M. Mintz -Financial Post

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson speaking to the 

Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

Public finance economists — myself included — have long argued that the best way to reduce GHG emissions is to impose a “price” via an emission trading system (ETS) or carbon tax . The idea is not new. British economist Arthur Pigou first proposed environmental taxes a century ago.

A Pigou argument for carbon pricing is based on both effectiveness and least economic cost. Businesses and households react to the price by adopting technologies or conservation practices to reduce emissions without any need for further political meddling in markets. As a bonus, recycling the revenues to reduce uncompetitive taxes such as the income tax results in a “double dividend” by improving both the environment and the economy .

The federal minister of natural resources, John Wilkinson, seems to agree — except for the double dividend bit: Ottawa gives its carbon tax revenues back to households in lump-sum transfers. But the minister is so sold on carbon taxes he’s willing to guarantee carbon prices in private-sector contracts and commit to paying penalties if the tax is cancelled — presumably in order to keep a future Poilievre government from doing just that. Legal issues aside, is it really smart to force a policy decision like this on future voters?

In the runup to the COP27 talkfest in Egypt, the OECD published a report on “ Pricing greenhouse gas emissions: Turning climate targets into climate action.” Because worldwide GHG emissions keep increasing and are expected to do so for the rest of decade perhaps it should have been called “Turning climate targets into climate in action.”

The OECD argues that carbon taxation and ETS systems are spreading, with 71 jurisdictions now pricing at least some GHG emissions. But dig into the numbers and you find the average 2021 global carbon tax was only 71 U.S. cents per tonne of CO2 — just 95 Canadian cents! Add in ETS pricing and the average carbon price shoots up to €4.29, or just C$5.80 — which amounts to a hill of beans.

To persuade us carbon pricing is important, the OECD also includes excise taxes on gasoline and diesel. They bring the carbon price up to €17.52 (C$23.67). But in most places the purpose of such taxes has been to fund subsidized road transportation and operate as a surrogate tax on congestion costs, not to price GHG emissions. Besides, it’s a very poor carbon levy because it only applies narrowly to just a few sources.

With the recent spike in energy prices, many countries have been handing out subsidies to help consumers cope. Net of subsidies, the 2021 carbon price (not including excise taxes on fuel) is €3.43 (C$4.06). Despite the Trudeau government’s rhetoric, Canada is in the middle of the pack with the 31st highest carbon price: €21.69 (C$29.36).

Maybe we should start asking the obvious question: why are carbon prices so low? They certainly haven’t caught on — not compared with the value-added tax (VAT), for instance, which started in 1954 in France and grew in 30 years to become an important revenue source in over 150 countries. VAT revenues now account for almost a fifth of total tax revenues in OECD countries while carbon revenues are bupkis – roughly three per cent of the total.

So why is carbon pricing failing as a policy? At least five reasons.

First, it is very visible, leads to higher prices for necessities (transportation and heating), and hurts low-income and rural voters. Hidden taxes and even costly regulations on businesses are politically easier: voters don’t see them raising prices, even though they do.

Second, voters like policies that give them money rather than take it away. Outside California the U.S. has very little carbon pricing. But Washington just passed legislation providing almost a half-trillion dollars in climate subsidies. Subsidies financed by higher deficits or corporate taxes are more appealing than taxes — until they break the bank.

Third, many countries have little faith in the effectiveness of carbon pricing, actually preferring clean energy regulations and mandates. Even Jonathan Wilkinson , when he was environment minister, was convinced that even with the carbon price rising to $170 per tonne mandates and clean fuel regulations were needed if Canada was to reach its (unrealistic) GHG emission targets by 2030.

BULLSHIT
Fourth, without international coordination carbon policies have significant impacts on competitiveness that could lead to deindustrialization and job losses in energy-intensive industries. For Canada, this is especially important. Our carbon policies are on a different track than those of our largest trading partner, the U.S. Even if we match the Americans’ huge new subsidies, our high carbon price will make Canadian businesses less competitive than U.S. companies. Border tariffs with the U.S. might offset our disadvantage but wouldn’t stop Canadian businesses shifting production south to the largest market in the world.

Fifth, energy security and poverty will force countries to trade off climate change with other public objectives until practical technologies develop commercially. In today’s energy crisis, European countries are scrambling for coal, natural gas and oil to support both consumers and industries.

Though it does bring in revenues, which is always appealing to governments, carbon pricing just doesn’t cut it for many countries, as the OECD has now shown.

 

Exploring dimensions of justice in climate science

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED SYSTEMS ANALYSIS

How can climate policy be made more just and fair? IIASA researchers have synthesized different dimensions of justice into a framework that can be used by climate scientists and policymakers, explaining how previous research has neglected many potential justice positions and how these can be implemented in policy contexts.

Dealing with climate change is not just about the environment – it is also about justice and fairness. This includes how we transition to cleaner ways of living, the different impacts on various groups of people, and who is responsible for what. Paying more attention to fairness and justice when making decisions will help policymakers to devise better climate policies that people can agree on.

Currently, people however don't always understand or talk about these concepts in the same way. While experts may think about justice and fairness when they plan ways to, for example, reduce carbon emissions, they often don't explain it clearly, instead using different words and measures, which can confuse both researchers and the public. This confusion makes it harder to share and understand the results.

In their new study published in Nature Climate Change, IIASA researchers propose a conceptual framework rooted in philosophical theory to address this gap in possibly the first systematic attempt to describe these different aspects or dimensions of justice for the climate domain in an interdisciplinary context. Their innovative framework synthesizes distributional, procedural, corrective, recognitional, and transitional justice that can be used by scientists and policymakers.

The framework aims to enhance interdisciplinary understanding of climate justice to prevent its mischaracterization and its misuse to justify delayed climate action. Recognizing that justice can either support or hinder decarbonization efforts, the researchers note that more research on justice-related issues is essential for the next cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“This framework aims to achieve three goals: improve clarity by using terminology from justice scholarship; promote awareness and consistency in examining justice concerns as part of a coherent whole; and enhance comparability across scenarios and modeling contexts, to facilitate discussions on these issues,” explains IIASA researcher Caroline Zimm, one of the study lead authors.

To implement this framework effectively, the authors propose the creation of a Justice Model Intercomparison Project (JUSTMIP) focused on mitigation scenarios.

“JUSTMIP would provide reporting templates for in-depth exploration of various research aspects, sectors, and model comparisons within the context of scenarios used by the next IPCC Assessment Report. This will raise awareness about the possibilities and limitations regarding justice considerations in these scenarios and enhance transparency,” notes IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Director, Keywan Riahi.

“It is important to note that our framework does not aim to evaluate what is just or unjust but rather provides a structured platform for identifying and discussing justice considerations. By bringing clarity and consistency to the discourse surrounding climate justice, this framework will empower both researchers and policymakers to navigate the intricate justice landscape and ensure that justice is a fundamental aspect of climate policy decisions,” concludes co-lead author Kian Mintz-Woo, a guest researcher at IIASA who is also associated with the Department of Philosophy and the Environmental Research Institute at University College Cork in Ireland.

This pioneering work is a significant step toward a more holistic and multidimensional understanding of justice in the context of climate change, offering a valuable tool to advance climate policy and research worldwide.

Reference
Zimm, C., Mintz-Woo, K., Brutschin, E., Hanger-Kopp, S., Hoffmann, R., Kikstra, J.S., Kuhn, M., Min, J., Muttarak, R., Pachauri, S., Patange, O., Riahi, K., Schinko, T. (2024). Justice considerations in climate research. Nature Climate Change DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01869-0

 

About IIASA:
The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is an international scientific institute that conducts research into the critical issues of global environmental, economic, technological, and social change that we face in the twenty-first century. Our findings provide valuable options to policymakers to shape the future of our changing world. IIASA is independent and funded by prestigious research funding agencies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. www.iiasa.ac.at

---

JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-023-01869-0 

ARTICLE TITLE

Justice considerations in climate research

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Jan-2024

Accusations of cronyism follow Shandro ally's appointment to AHS board

Author of the article: Bill Kaufmann
Publishing date: Aug 13, 2021 • 

Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro speaks In Calgary on Friday, July 9, 2021. PHOTO BY JIM WELLS /Postmedia

The naming of a close ally of Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro to the Alberta Health Services board has raised accusations of cronyism and renewed concerns over the direction the province’s medical system is taking.

On Monday, the AHS announced the appointment of Hartley R. Harris, president of Calgary-based Catch Engineering and chair of Energy Industry Electrical Engineering Associates.

“Hartley’s skills and experience will provide a fresh perspective to the AHS Board and to Alberta’s healthcare system as we continue to transform our healthcare system and move forward with the recommendations outlined in the AHS Performance Review,” AHS Board Chair David Weyant said in a press release.

But watchdog group Friends of Medicare contend Harris lacks qualification for the position and said the appointment reeks of cronyism, pointing to Elections Alberta records showing he served as chief financial officer for Health Minister Tyler Shandro’s 2019 election campaign.

Those same records also indicate Harris donated $2,281 to that campaign.

“Definitely there’s a conflict of interest there. . . The cronyism is a huge concern,” said the group’s executive director Sandra Azocar. “We’ve been calling for the governance of AHS to be done by public health experts like doctors.”

She said Harris’s business background and affiliation with the UCP sends another signal the government is serious about privatizing more of the province’s public health care system, some of which was recommended in a review completed in 2020.

“With legislation from this government and the plan to outsource to the private sector the jobs of 11,000 support workers, we know that push to privatization is real,” said Azocar.

The recent appointment of prominent business figure and academic Dr. Jack Mintz to the AHS board rings similar alarm bells, she said.

Jack Mintz of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. PHOTO BY DON HEALY /Postmedia

“When you have people you can’t trust to (advance public health care), it’s a huge concern,” said Azocar.

According to the AHS website, board members are paid $14,250 a year and $665 per meeting to a maximum of $1,900 a month while committee chairs are annually paid an additional $1,900.

NDP health care critic David Shepherd said the government has been creating a crony-laden “echo chamber” on boards and commissions with Harris’s appointment the latest example.

“If you want to create good government policy, you want diversity at the table, but they have no interest in hearing from someone who doesn’t agree with them,” he said.

“It certainly gives the appearance they’d rather do business with their friends than look after the health of Albertans.”

Harris couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.

A spokesman for AHS said the AHS couldn’t comment on Harris’s appointment because it’s a provincial government matter.

A spokesman for Shandro’s office said Harris’s appointment was a solid choice for the AHS board and castigated critics of the appointment as partisan hacks.

“Mr. Harris is an exceptionally well qualified board member, and we’re grateful to him for his willingness to serve,” Steve Buick said in an email.

“The attempt to smear him is a disgrace and a new low in hypocrisy for the Friends of Medicare — a front group for the NDP and public-sector unions.”

1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible sells for $38M at auction in New York

 

Sotheby's unveils the Codex Sassoon for auction, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023, in the Manhattan borough of New York. The 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible that is one of the oldest surviving biblical manuscripts sold for $38.1 million, which includes the auction house's fee, Wednesday, May 17, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — A 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible that is one of the world’s oldest surviving biblical manuscripts sold for $38 million in New York on Wednesday.

The Codex Sassoon, a leather-bound, handwritten parchment volume containing a nearly complete Hebrew Bible, was purchased by former U.S. Ambassador to Romania Alfred H. Moses on behalf of the American Friends of ANU and donated to ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, where it will join the collection, Sotheby’s said in statement.

The manuscript was exhibited at the ANU Museum in March as part of a worldwide tour before the auction.

Sotheby’s Judaica specialist Sharon Liberman Mintz said the $38 million price tag, which includes the auction house’s fee, “reflects the profound power, influence, and significance of the Hebrew Bible, which is an indispensable pillar of humanity.”

It’s one of highest prices for a manuscript sold at auction. In 2021, a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution sold for $43 million. Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester sold for $31 million in 1994, or around $60 million in today’s dollars.

Mintz said she was “absolutely delighted by today’s monumental result and that Codex Sassoon will shortly be making its grand and permanent return to Israel, on display for the world to see.”

The Codex Sassoon is believed to have been fabricated sometime between 880 and 960.

It got its name in 1929 when it was purchased by David Solomon Sassoon, a son of an Iraqi Jewish business magnate who filled his London home with his collection of Jewish manuscripts.

Sassoon’s estate was broken up after he died and the biblical codex was sold by Sotheby’s in Zurich in 1978 to the British Rail Pension Fund for around $320,000, or $1.4 million in today’s dollars.

The pension fund sold the Codex Sassoon 11 years later to Jacqui Safra, a banker and art collector, bought it in 1989 for $3.19 million ($7.7 million in today’s dollars). Safra was the seller on Wednesday.