All of Ulf Graf 🔹&#x27;s Comments + Replies

Global tax and global government institution to redistribute the money for the most good - achievable?

You're welcome! Thank you for the information! Yes, it is true that people who benefit from the current structures use their money and power to gain more money and power. I have made a forum post about green basic income, in the end of the post I try to give some suggestions: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tAF4zQSfDGpABLCaH/green-basic-income-and-health-taxes-as-a-way-for-systemic

I also co-authored the systems change 101: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bwZ6HqRSjYh5DS99r/systems-change-101

I hope that those posts might give ... (read more)

Janika

7mo

Thank you! Very interesting to read. However, what can we do to get the good ideas from paper to reality? I feel frustrated from just piling up knowledge, walking miles and miles at demonstrations, signing petitions and hoping for someone to change sth. This feels incredibly ineffective. I see that patiently working on spreading knowledge and visibility does have an effect, but for many lifes that could be safed this is waaaay to slow. Of course, revolutions are often a shortcut to change, but they come with huge suffering, and peaceful activism doesn't build enough urge for those in power to really change sth. So many activists and initatives gave up because they were investing time and money again and again and their achievements were small. So I am searching for the "weak spot" in the system to empower and accelerate change.

Global tax and global government institution to redistribute the money for the most good - achievable?

Thank you Jeroen for the link! I had totally forgot about that! =)

Answer by Ulf Graf 🔹Jul 14, 20253

Hi Janika! I really like your ideas! I think Equal Right is closest to your ideas since they promote a low global basic income and a global wealth tax (and some other taxes and fees): https://www.equalright.org/

UN has a Universal Periodic Review about human rights. Having something similar for the SDG:s or global risks would probably be fruitful: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/upr/upr-home

I hope my comment is helpful!

Jeroen De Ryck 🔹

7mo

The UN does write yearly reports on the progress made towards the SDGs. The latest report (for 2024) can be found here: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2024/

Janika

7mo

Thank you! I also now this initative: https://www.tax-the-rich.eu/ Unfortunately, they failed to collect enough signatures to force the EU to debate it. But as the equal right movement, the initatives try to achieve the tax via the current governments. The Club ob Rome also suggests (among lot of other huge changes) to use taxes in order to reduce the inequality and to stabilize society in their "Earth for all"-publication. But they also point out that many progressive decisions will be hard to achieve with the current structures, as those benefiting will use their influence and money to work against it and therefore also encourage e.g. grassroot movements in order to support the ideas. This is why I am explicitely searching for alternative ways to work on that issue.

Should EAs pay more attention to Climate Tipping Points? AMOC Collapse as a Case Study

Buy and Retire Polluters' Rights to Emit CO2

Thank you for a really interesting and well-written article! I am a lecturer in public health and have lectures about the interconnection between global societal and ecological crises. I have heard about the weakening of the Gulf Stream and that it could make it colder, but I have never seen detailed examples of the consequences of AMOC collapse. AMOC collapse togehter with things that I already talk about seems really problematic. E.g. 99% of coral reefs are expected to be dead by 2050. 44% (48 million km2) of the world’s habitable land is used for a... (read more)

Highly effective charity discovered - 915 QALYs per dollar

Equal Right is testing a similar model in Palau and Tuvalu: https://www.equalright.org/

I guess you have already heard of it, but I put the link here just in case, because I really like their idea. :)

Paco del Villar

7mo

Hi Ulf, thank you for bringing up Equal Right: I was actually not familiar with it! From their cap-and-share proposal, I gather that they advocate for a cap on emissions with allowances that aren't tradeable. An argument in favor of trading allowances is that polluters can freely redistribute allowances towards those who value them more (i.e. emit to produce more valuable things), resulting in lower pollution abatement costs. Cap-and-share involves direct government control over individual polluters, which makes climate mitigation costlier: Greenstone et al. (2025) found that cap-and-trade reduced pollution abatement costs by 11% relative to the traditional command-and-control approach in India.

Ulf Graf 🔹8mo2

It sounds like a more effective version of Moai in Okinawa. It will be interesting to see how it goes!

https://www.bluezones.com/2018/08/moai-this-tradition-is-why-okinawan-people-live-longer-better/

I wish you luck with this project!

Big if true: Three health interventions worth a closer look

Ulf Graf 🔹10mo5

Happier Lives Institute made an analysis of EarthEnable which was in their chapter in the latest World Happiness report. I guess they will make a report about it in the near future but I am not sure. So they have looked at flooring and housing. :)

Mo Putera

10mo

Ah, I missed this, thanks! And I appreciate the pointer to EarthEnable in particular. Although it looks like their analysis stopped at the shallow level, so maybe no future report... EarthEnable looks quite impressive by their own lights: 35,000+ "housing solution projects" completed or in progress benefiting 200,000+ people, and over 1,000 jobs created in East Africa (they "developed training curriculum for masons to learn to build our products to earn a livelihood of 2-3x the median income"). I also appreciate how most of their senior team seems local at a glance. Just posting HLI's chart here for others' benefit: Quoting their qualifier too:

Ideas for incorporating Effective Altruism causes into a statistics assignment?

Answer by Ulf Graf 🔹Apr 12, 20252

I think your ideas are good! I use datasets from Gapminder for my students in public health. They might be useful for you or give inspiration: https://www.gapminder.org/data/

Rich and Poor: How Things Work

Ulf Graf 🔹1y3

Thank you for another insightful and interesting comment as well, Vasco! It was really nice to discuss with you and want to say that I have great respect for you and your texts. You gave me a lot to think about. I am very curios about how you would like the world to look like, what would your utopia be? I understand that it might be much to write (if you haven't written about it already), so it is no rush, and you don't need to reply if you feel that you want to use your time in other ways instead. But thanks again for giving me new perspectives and knowledge, I hope that I was able to return the favor. :)

Vasco Grilo🔸

Thanks a lot, Ulf! Thanks for the question! I strongly endorse expectational total hedonistic utilitarianism (maximising happiness, and minimising suffering), so my ideal world would have as much expected total hedonistic welfare as possible. Nearterm, I would like people to consider digital sentience, factory-farming, and wild animal suffering the most pressing issues of our time (I have ordered them alphabetically). More importantly, I would like people to donate more to the Arthropoda Foundation, SWP or WAI. I think these are the organisations which more cost-effectively increase welfare. In addition, I believe increasing the donations to those organisations is the best strategy to maximise impact for the vast majority of people, even among people working in impact-focussed organisations. Longterm, I would like the world to be filled with beings which have the most welfare per energy consumed. I estimate bees can experience 4.88 k times as much welfare per calorie consumption as humans. My estimates for the 5th and 95th percentile are 0 and 31.7 k, so I am not confident filling the universe with bees would be better than filling it with humans. Moreover, there may be other species or non-biological beings which experience even more welfare per energy consumed than bees. However, I would be surprised if humans were the beings experiencing the most welfare per energy consumption.

Rich and Poor: How Things Work

Ulf Graf 🔹1y9

Thank you very much, Vasco! I am glad that you liked my comment. I will try to answer all your questions as good as I can. I haven't replied to long post before so I don't know how to do the cool paragraphs that you do, so sorry if it gets a little confusing.

I updated the link, so it should work now. Thank you for mentioning this!

I didn't find any good data for how much the top quintile funded governement transfers in other countries, but it would have been very interesting to look at. Thank you for the interesting information.

I think one reason for Singap... (read more)

Vasco Grilo🔸

Thanks for another insightful comment, Ulf! Great to know! I worry efforts to preserve biodiversity may be harmful due to encouraging wildnerness preservation, and therefore increasing wild animal suffering. I also think fighting climate change may be harmful due to increasing wild animal suffering. I would even say helping people in poverty may be harmful via increasing factory-farming. I believe the effects of Cool Earth on animals can easily dominate those on humans, and there is lots of uncertainty about whether the effects on animals are positive or negative, so I do not know whether Cool Earth is overall beneficial or harmful. Relatedly:

Rich and Poor: How Things Work

Ulf Graf 🔹1y*11

First of all, I want to thank you for your posts. Many of them have given me new perspectives and knowledge that I appreciate. I want to mention that the two-parameter ortega model probably is a better measurement for inequality, but it isn't used very much so it is hard to find any numbers.

I also want to mention that income inequality is problematic, since it correlates with almost all societal problems. Social mobility is greater in countries with low income inequality, since they have more robust welfare systems. It is easier to achieve the "American dr... (read more)

Vasco Grilo🔸

Thanks, Ulf! I appreciate you sharing relevant links too. I strongly upvoted your comment. I cannot open the above link. Even then, in the United States (US), "The top quintile funded 90.1 percent, or $1.6 trillion, of all government transfers in 2019". I do not know whether taxing people with higher income more heavily would increase human welfare. I agree it would nearterm, as 1 $ results in a greater increase in welfare for people with lower income. However, my sense is that economists tend to agree that income and capital taxes decrease the growth of real gross domestic product (real GDP) per capita, which is strongly correlated with median income across countries. At least in the US, there has also been a strong correlation between mean and median income. So I expect taxing people with higher income more heavily via income and capital taxes would lead to a slower growth of the median income, which may decrease welfare longterm. I would need a more comprehensive analysis to be persuaded. Singapore's tax revenue was 11.5 % of its GDP in 2022, less than US' 26.8 %, and much less than Sweden's 43 %, but Singapore is much closer to Sweden than the US in terms of social outcomes. There is a good correlation between self-reported life satisfaction and real GDP per capita across countries. So, since I think taxing people with higher income more heavily via income and capital taxes would slow down the growth of real GDP per capita, I worry it may lead to less welfare longterm. Zooming out, I also care about the effects on animals. So I would want to know how taxing people with higher income more heavily would affect the consumption of animal-based foods, and development of alternative proteins to come to an overall view about whether people with higher income should be taxed more or less. I believe the 3 animal-based foods which account for the most animal suffering, ordered from the least to the most expensive, are chicken meat, fish, and shrimp. In high income c

Is Musk still net-positive for humanity?

Answer by Ulf Graf 🔹Feb 06, 20251

When this was posted I would have said probably yes, now I say probably no.

Miquel Banchs-Piqué (prev. mikbp)

What made you change your mind?

Against Addressing Root Causes

Ulf Graf 🔹1y6

I would say that we need to address the root causes in areas that are too complex to solve with simple solutions, e.g. biodiversity loss, since it is interconnected with many other systemic challenges. According to the assessment report about Nexus, which is the interconnections between the following crises: Climate change, biodiversity, water, food and health. According to the report, there are 7 trillion USD in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, and damages to nature for 10-25 trillion USD in unaccounted costs. Also, there are 35 times more resource... (read more)

Are you living in accordance with your stated AI timelines?

Capitalism and the Very Long Term

I think that it is a high risk that AI or something else will be a great threat for humanity within a short future. But I can't say how high the risk is or when in the future. But no matter how long or short time I have left, I would carry on like I always do. I spend time with my family and I love my job as a teacher at an university. I couldn't ask for more. I feel that there is nothing more I must do before I die. So I am grateful and happy every day. But... My parents have four houses in a forest in the middle of Sweden. So if the apocalypse comes, I have a place where it is a quite good chance for surviving.

Aligning SDG and EA through effective SDG

I skimmed in your article and must say that I am impressed. I think it is important for the EA community to think about what planet and what society we want. I looked at the summary of the IPBES Nexus Assesment and it seems clear to me that our economic system doesn't work in its current state. That 7 trillion in subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, and damages on nature for 10-25 trillion in unaccounted costs is problematic. Also, the fact that there is 35 times more resources going to causes that destroys our planet than supports our nature shows that... (read more)

Ulf Graf 🔹1y10

Hi Alexis! I think it is a wonderful idea and I would like to help you! I am kind of time constrained (having a one year old at home and working) but I will be able to give you advise. I am teaching public health at a Swedish university and I hold lectures about these topics. So I have some knowledge in this topic and would love to share it with you!

Ways the world is getting better - discussion thread

Ulf Graf 🔹1y5

Gapminder has a list of 100 positive news during 2023: https://www.gapminder.org/news/100-positive-news-from-2023/

EA-y find-a-friend

Should we try harder to appeal to conservatives?

Thank you for a wonderful initiative! I think that many people will be happy about this!

Your Advice For a High School Student.

I think that we should aim for using evidence based on reality and not try to change our ways because we want to appeal to different political groups. That doesn't mean that we can find cause areas that are more interesting for different political groups. I guess that many conservatives might be skeptical to some paths in the EA movement that involves areas like animal welfare, climate change and raising some types of taxes and health policies (e.g. the Swedish right actively work against climate change mitigation, animal welfare and health policies), whic... (read more)

Your Advice For a High School Student.

Thank you, I am happy that it was helpful! I am just an ordinary university teacher without a PhD so it was the first time someone called me professor! :) I wish you luck with finding the right path for you! No matter what path you choose, I think you will do great things and have a large impact! :)

Answer by Ulf Graf 🔹Jan 12, 20253

Thank you for your post! I will try to give you as good advice as I can. I teach public health at a university in Sweden so I am a little biased towards global health probably.

Depending on you think is interesting and meaningful, you should choose what you like. As you are good at math, maybe statistics or health economics is a good way for you? I think that no matter what cause area you choose, it is probably good to be able to make a cost-effectiveness analysis.

Do you want to start your own organisation or choose an already existing? Volunteering a... (read more)

AhmedWez

Thank you for your helpful comment, professor Graf!

The Solutionary Way - Bridging the Gap Between EA and Social Justice?

New Year's Thread: What do you want to achieve this year?

I am very happy to hear that! You're welcome! :)

Answer by Ulf Graf 🔹Jan 02, 20256

I gave input to the UN together with Cool Earth, Equal Right and Professor Robert Fletcher. During 2025 I will try to figure out what to do with that text (any suggestions are warmly welcome): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uAzSycfm190C1hnVDCnYTXK2d1tvw0WsbfE8RJYvw2U/edit?usp=drivesdk

I will also try to figure out how I can start a PhD in a meaningful research project. I am stuck in the southern Sweden because I have my family here, but at the university where I work as a lecturer in public health, there are not many research projects that feels right ... (read more)

The Solutionary Way - Bridging the Gap Between EA and Social Justice?

Answer by Ulf Graf 🔹Jan 01, 20254

Thank you for this post! I think it might be beneficial in some ways for the EA movement but a barrier in other ways. It is quite hard to find good evidence for cost-effectiveness of systemic changes, which makes it hard to look closer into. It is also hard to separate systemic change from politics, which can create tensions in a community.

Well… I am involved. I made some input to the UN together with Cool Earth, Equal Right and Robert Fletcher: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uAzSycfm190C1hnVDCnYTXK2d1tvw0WsbfE8RJYvw2U/edit?usp=drivesdk

I also made a f... (read more)

I’m already learning so much just from reading through some of what you shared. Thank you for replying!

The Case For Giving To The Shrimp Welfare Project

Ulf Graf 🔹1y11

I just want to thank you for such an impressive forum post! I think Shrimp Welfare is very interesting and it has been an eye-opener for me when it comes to animal welfare. My own area is global / public health in different forms, but I will use some of the examples mentioned here in my lectures about global health and economic evaluations for my students if it is okay for you? I think it might be an eye-opener for some of them as well.

Bentham's Bulldog

Yeah sure! Thanks so much!

Utopian Equality

Thank you for an interesting forum post! In my forum post I present some examples of how to decrease inequality by using taxes and basic income. The best examples there are safety income and basic income that is funded with environmental taxes.

All the best,
Ulf Graf

Thank you for your wise reply, again! Yes, that is true. Even if we stopped all CO2-emissions now, almost none of the existing would go away because it will be up there for such a long time. But methane vanishes more quickly.

Yes, you are correct here as well. Organizations like Future Matters, that is founded by EA people, are doing research and strategy consulting services in policy, politics, coalitions and movements. So they could use this kind of article, since they give advice to politicians and national policy makers. But I still think that taxes is ... (read more)

Thank you Jackva, you have very wise input. I would also want the most impactful long-term policies as well. I think that the climate change already have gone so far that we need quite much focus on the short-term. For example, UNEP estimates that 25 to 50 % of all coral reefs are already destroyed, mostly because of global warming, and 70 to 90 % will be gone if we reach 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Many of your suggestions are good for both short-term and long-term impact so I agree that it could be better than the policies in the article. Policies... (read more)

jackva

Thanks! I think if we optimize for short-term impact we would want a list that focuses on short-lived pollutants (e.g. methane) or short-term adaptation measures. I think the weakness of the article for EA prioritization is that it optimizes for something -- domestic certain reductions within countries -- that is not related to any globally relevant target metric. E.g. irrespective of whether one optimizes for the short-term or long-term in neither scenario will the focus on national target achievement be relevant directly (it might matter somewhat indirectly via signaling). Obviously, it is a good article for national policy makers that want to achieve national targets.

Thank you all for your comments! I agree that these policies may not have a massive global impact in the same way as clean energy policies, but 26 to 41 % in reductions is still a lot. I believe that additional effort and innovation-support is important as well. But carbon pricing and things like innovation-support can be combined. The Swiss CO2 Levy uses carbon pricing to give money to innovation, for example (see text below). As you see in the text below and in this graph by OECD, the cost for raising prices for carbon emissions can increase revenues as ... (read more)

jackva

Thanks! I agree that policies can be combined but that doesn't really change the fundamental problem that evaluating policies for their certain local short-term impact will move us away from more impactful policies.

Thank you very much! I am happy that you liked it! I hope that Effective Environmentalism will have use for it! :)

Mortality Cost of Taxation

Ulf Graf 🔹1y23

PolicyShow more

Of 1500 climate policies that have been implemented over the past 25 years, the 63 most successful ones are in this article (that I don't have access to, but a good summary is here). The 63 policies reduced between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion metric tonnes CO2 emissions. The typical effects that the 63 most effective policies had, could close the emissions gap by 26%-41%. Pricing is most effective in developed countries, while regulations are the most effective policies in developing countries. The climate policy explorer shows the best policies for differ... (read more)

jackva

This is good raw data, but I don't think one can learn very much from this for what actions to prioritize for a couple of reasons: (1) The focus is on national targets, while the most transformative policies in the past have had massive global impacts long-term with minimal local effects in the short-term (cf. early solar and wind policies, many of which were not even motivated as climate policies). Indeed, there is often a negative correlation between short-term domestic and long-term global impacts (I explore this a bit here). (2) What matters for taking action is decarbonization returns on additional effort (activism, philanthropy, policy momentum), which could be quite different from absolute emissions reductions if implemented (similar to what Habryka is commenting on). (3) In particular, this biases against relatively modest looking interventions that can be transformative (often have been in the past) such as innovation-support for nascent and early-stage technologies, where carbon pricing does ~nothing, but R&D expenditure, creating market demand, public co-financing of demonstration projects etc. make a large difference. (4) Somewhat less importantly, the authors have a well-known focus on advancing carbon pricing, so this is something to keep in mind.

Habryka [Deactivated]

I haven't read the linked article or summary in detail, but clearly any measure of "success" must measure the costs of these policies as well? At least a quick skim seems to suggest the article didn't account for costs at all, which I feel like makes this abstraction kind of meaningless (since it basically means that the "most successful" ones will simply be the ones that were the ones that covered the largest countries/industries, but that doesn't tell us much, since that's also where the potential costs were located). It still seems good to do these calculations, but I would feel very hesitant to call these policies "successful" without having measured their costs. A much better measure of "success" would be something like "Co2 averted"/"economic costs" * "size of intervention".

Ruben Dieleman 🔸

Outstanding, thanks for sharing! Effective Environmentalism, take note!

Ulf Graf 🔹1y5

I have a table here showing the difference between a country with low taxes (United States) and a country with high taxes (Sweden). What I want to say with the table is that people who are unemployed have much more money in Sweden compared to the US. Also, in Sweden the taxes are making the costs lower for elderly care, child care, education, health care, medicine and so on. So even if the taxes are higher, you probably have better access to health care, medicine and financial aid in Sweden even if you are living on a minimum income. Because of the redistr... (read more)

Richard Bruns

This post is not about the total aggregate effect of taxing money and then spending it wisely. It is just about the taxation. Yes, Sweden saves more money with its social spending than it kills with its tax system. But Swedish life expectancy would be even higher if the money all came from natural resources, without any taxation.

Green basic income and health taxes as a way for systemic change