Category Archives: Free markets and their discontents

Why Amazon Is Fighting So Hard to Stop Warehouse Workers From Unionizing

Amazon has much to answer for, like wage theft and brutal workplace condidtion, and is throwing its muscle behind not being held to account.

Why U.S. Labor Laws Need a Major Update—The PRO Act Is a Great Start

Biden is proposing some significant changes to labor law. Does the legislation live up to its billing?

Corporate Concentration in the US Food System Makes Food More Expensive and Less Accessible for Many Americans

How Big Food increases prices in categories like bread, beer, processed chicken, and packaged salad, and what to do about it.

Intellectual Property Cause of Covid Death, Genocide

Refusal to temporarily suspend several WTO intellectual property provisions to accelerate broad progress against the pandemic is genocide.

Goldman Is Evil But McKinsey Is Worse

Why the McKinsey veneer is looking tattier and tattier with every passing day, and why that’s not likely to change.

Michael Hudson – Changes in Super Imperialism

Michael Hudson recaps his classic Super Imperalism and extends it to the 21st century struggle for dominance among the US, China, and Russia.

Negative Interest Rates Are Coming, but There Is No Chance That They Will Work

Negative interest rates: a bad idea that some central banks still can’t resist.

Betsy DeVos Is Gone, But Her Education Agenda Is Rolling Out Across the Country

Even though Betty DeVos was depicted as a textbook ogre, her education privatization agenda is advancing as if it were perfectly respectable.

“The Vibe in North Houston”: A Report on Working Class Men Betrayed and in Angst

An account of working class men on the boil.

As COVID Rages, Bankruptcy Cases Fall…..For Now

The good news about bankruptcy under Covid is not likely to last.

Epidemic of Despair Could Haunt America Long After COVID

The pandemic may have severe after-effects, with deaths of despair impacting more distressed and newly-vulnerable populations.

Covid Road to Hell Paved with Good Intentions

Rich countries are subverting a program to assure that poor nations can afford Covid vaccines. Is a WTO mechanism a way out?

Some Implications of the GameStop Short Squeeze

The seeming success of the GameStop short-slayers could in the long run come at high cost to some of them and most of us.