An interview with Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, on the Renegade Economists radio/podcast
Read more...A mere day after strikes at Amazon warehouses in Germany, which caught the attention of the media in the US, Slate ran as its lead piece in Moneybox an article that bears all the hallmarks of being a PR plant: Amazon Warehouses Are the New Factories.
I suspect the author, Emma Roller, wouldn’t recognize a factory if it fell on her.
Read more...Amazon is rapidly becoming the poster child for what is wrong with the so-called new economy.
Read more...To the extent that middle class and more affluent people think about poverty in America, they likely have blurry, partial images due to distance and lack of direct experience. Their remedies might include better education and training, higher minimum wages, more affordable housing.
New Scientist thinks otherwise. Its headline for a blistering editorial: Want to fix US inequality? Begin with worming tablets.
Read more...orporate executives love to peddle the notion that they need to have their low tax payments reduced even further, even as the share of GDP represented by company profits is at unprecedentedly high levels.
Read more...Yves here. Das continues his discussion of the impact of the erosion of trust (see here for Part I). Here he focuses on the political impact on international dealings and national politics.
Read more...Yves here. Das makes some statements in this post that I am certain will provide grist for reader discussion. But even if you quibble on some of the particulars, I anticipate you’ll agree on the extent of the damage done to trust at various levels of society and how costly it is proving to be.
Read more...Michael Hudson sent this short video which explains the history of debt jubilees and the role of private debt in the rise of oligarchies.
Read more...The best political system that money can buy is doing a great job for its customers and a lousy job for the rest of us.
Read more...A report issued by McKinsey Global Institute last week on the real world impact of QE warrants more scrutiny than it has gotten so far.
Read more...Prima facie evidence of the need to boycott Walmart (as if more were necessary)
Read more...Yves here. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in hoping for the best from the new journalistic venture funded by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar that Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, among others, have joined with much fanfare. But the fact that one wishes them well should not blind observers to the possible large flies in the ointment.
Read more...If a bad job market wasn’t damaging enough, the cost of paying off student loans does much more harm to the long-term prospects of young people than is commonly realized.
Read more...I want to give you a picture of our rulers, our betters. You may think of them as far-seeing modernists (Eric Schmidt, stand up please) or vaguely boorish (Mr. Trump? Mr. Adelson?). But even the lowest of your visions of them would, in the main, be generous.
Their depravity and psychopathology is worse than your worst imaginings.
Read more...I’m generally very taken with Ian Welsh’s work, particularly two recent posts, A New Ideology and How to Create a Viable Ideology. He then continued with 44 Explicit Points on Creating a Better World. And I hate to say it, but the last piece was no where near as well thought out as the preceding pieces. What troubled me about his latest piece was its combination of confidence (as opposed to modesty and soliciting reactions and input) in combination with it having internal contractions and a lack of precision of language. But perhaps the biggest shortcoming was trying to finesse the question of governance.
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