Category Archives: Social policy

Bill Black: Note to Italy – Please Send Us More Saracenos

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives

Austerity has driven unemployment among young Italian adults to over 35%. The result is that Italian university graduates are emigrating. This loss of Italy’s greatest source of future productivity gains is particularly crippling because Italy has far fewer university graduates than most developed nations.

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Citi Cuts 11,000 Jobs Rather Than Lower Pay, Illustrating Rentier Capitalism in Operation

Citi is a particularly blatant example of a way of operating that has become endemic in American business: when things get tough, throw as many employees as possible under the bus, and use that to maintain or even increase the pay of the top echelon.

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Why Occupy Wall Street’s Rolling Jubilee Puts Borrowers at Risk

Last month, I criticized the well meaning but naive strategy of the Occupy Wall Street group Strike Debt for dealing with consumer debt, which is to buy severely discounted debt from debt collectors and forgive it. My main complaint was that there were more productive approaches, such as wider publicity and distribution of the Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual, providing more counseling and legal support to borrowers, and using debt purchases to develop cases against the debt sellers. By contrast, the Rolling Jubilee increases the profitability of bad system by providing more revenues to the incumbents, while the debt purchases are unlikely to do more than help a few random people. It might make for feel-good PR, but it won’t make a dent in the problem.

Perversely the post got pushback on the last (and by implication, the least important) issue raised, namely, that of possible tax problems with the scheme. I wanted to revisit this issue and demonstrate why the responses of allies and members of Strike Debt have failed to put the issue to rest, and more important, why this matters.

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Dan Kervick: Will We Be the Lamest Generation?

Yves here. Any post that starts out by making fun of Matt Yglesias already has something going for it. But one bit I quibble with. Kervick suggests that Social Security might be excluded from a Grand Bargain. Don’t get too optimistic.

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9 Greedy CEOs Trying to Shred the Safety Net While Pigging Out on Corporate Welfare

By Lynn Parramore, a senior editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet

A gang of brazen CEOs has joined forces to promote economically disastrous and socially irresponsible austerity policies. Many of those same CEOs were bailed out by the American taxpayer after a Wall Street-driven financial crash. Instead of a thank-you, they are showing their appreciation in the form of a coordinated effort to rob Americans of hard-earned retirements, decent medical care and relief for the poorest.

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The Expanding Surveillance Society: Getting You to Buy Into Being Monitored

Like it or not, you in the not too distant future are going to have to submit to personal surveillance to get many types of insurance and certain financial products. And that future is closer than you probably realize.

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Stop Using “Obama for America” Against the People!

Yves here. Team Obama is fast out of the box with its plan to redeploy its campaign ops to sell Americans on why they should lie back and think of England why they should embrace a future with more income disparity and more catfood for old people. The media got wind of the plan the evening before the messaging barrage started. Joe Firestone does a able job of taking it apart.

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A Foreign Supply Chain Threat Opening on Walmart Labor Protests?

It’s too early to tell how effective the Black Friday against Walmart’s low pay and abusive working conditions were. The early reports from management and the organizers are wildly at odds with each other.

However, a new front may open up in the Walmart disputes: that of disruption to its international shipments.

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Obama to Deploy Campaign Apparatus to Persuade Americans to Look Forward to More and Better Catfood

Our Fearless Great Betrayer is about to repurpose his campaign sales machine to persuasion of the American public of the necessity of making do with less to appease the Bond Gods. The bizarre part, as many have noted, is the Bond Gods actually don’t seem to want the human sacrifice involved (old people dying faster) but their Wall Street soothsayers would have you believe otherwise.

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The Giant Lie Trotted Out by Fiscal Conservatives Trying to Shred Social Security

By Lynn Parramore, a contributing editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet

Trying to convince the public to cut America’s best-loved and most successful program requires a lot of creativity and persistence.

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Bill Black: Wall Street Uses the Third Way to Lead its Assault on Social Security

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City

Third Way, lobbyists for and from Wall Street who are leading the effort to enrich Wall Street by privatizing Social Security, was created by Wall Street to fool some of the people all of the time.

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Drums Beating to Privatize Social Security

This Real News Network interview with Bill Black provides an overview of why Wall Street and the Administration are so keen to gut well loved and socially valuable safety nets for the elderly, in particular, Social Security. This talk is a good introduction for people who may not understand how high the stakes in the budget fight are and why the economic arguments used to justify it are bogus.

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Bill Black: Jobs Now – Make Obama’s Priority Reality and Expose the Lie of Lazy Laborers

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City

President Obama gave a major speech today on his legislative agenda. He said that the overriding national priority had to be jobs. We agree.

The problem is that Republicans and Democrats are pushing a “Grand Bargain” that would reduce jobs.

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