Category Archives: Free markets and their discontents

Carmakers’ EV Enthusiasm Fizzles Out as Consumers Pull Back

Automakers are warning EV sales are falling short of the level needed to meet climate change containment goals. What to do?

Dead Smoke Alarms, Moldy Rooms, Empty First Aid Kits: Farmworkers Endure Unsafe and Substandard Housing Across US

US agriculture workers are in desperate need of labor action as the employers (and regulators) do next to nothing to ensure safe working and living conditions.

NYC Squeezing Migrants Out of Waiting Rooms, Effectively Forcing Them on to the Streets

NYC Mayor Adams wants to close overflow sites where migrants evicted from shelters sleep on the ground while waiting for a new cot

Inflation and Power

Why the Fed’s approach to inflation has the main effect of reducing labor bargaining power, which is seldom the real problem.

Economic Solutions: How To Go from Financialized Neoliberalism to a Productive, Sustainable Economy

Some concrete proposals for how to slip the yoke of neoliberalism and start building a fairer and more functional economy.

Net-Zero Targets Face Reality Check

Net-zero is staring to look like a big zero. Not at all good news to those who would like this planet to be hospitable in 100 years.

EU Farmers’ Protests, Food Security, and the Green New Deal Big Lie by Omission About Livelihoods

How the EU farmers’ protests illustrate the obstacles to climate change containment policies. And Green hopium has made matters worse.

Rob Urie: Imperialism, Lenin, and US Wars Abroad

Why Lenin was right.

Neocolonial ISDS, Abused, Biased, Costly, and Grossly Unfair

Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in trade pacts – long abused by opportunists – are slowly being rejected by governments.

The Real Reason Your Grocery Bill Is Still So High

Big Ag price gouging is driving still elevated grocery store prices. When will that become a political issue?

CBO and CMS Continue to Overestimate Health Care Cost Increases, Creating Unjustified Pressure to Cut Benefits

The CBO and CMS, keep overestimating health cost increase, and at least for the CBO, it’s due to neoliberal fealty.

Freedom of Navigation: Houthi Attacks Only Part of How a Historical Anomaly Is Unwinding

Open seas, often touted as freedom of navigation, may be on its way out due to US negligence and technology change.