It’s probably a bit late to be addressing this topic, but the use of romance and sexual insecurity as a hook for selling goods and services is so pervasive that it’s societal Muzak. Well, worse than Muzak, because it’s not hard to tune Muzak out, but the touting of romance keys into deep-seated emotional and physical needs, making it more challenging to ignore this type of hucksterism.
Read more...With public companies fixated on quarterly profits, which results in underinvestment and treatment of employees as disposables, companies who (gasp) pursue a long-term strategy and invest in their workforce should have a real competitive advantage. Thus worked owned enterprises aren’t simply a way to contend with the program to disempower labor; it’s also a way to take advantage of the inefficiencies of rentier capitalism.
Read more...One of the canards libertarians like to sell is that the state has a monopoly on violence.
Read more...Yes, sports fans, you read that headline correctly. The top 1% has captured all of the income gains since 2009 and then some, roaring ahead while the rest of the population slipped behind.
Read more...The New York Times comes in on the side of the whining rich in a piece titled, “Two-Tax Rise Tests Wealthy in California.”
Read more...Please download and enjoy this ebook, which is a joint project of Alternet and Econ4, an organization of heterodox economists promoting social change.
Read more...Dystopian technology fantasies are flooding the media, to the delight of the 1 percent.
Read more...By Neil Wilson, an expert in finance and innovation systems. Cross posted from 3spoken
Calling all chronic Urine Drinkers and Dung Eaters. I’d like to explain government borrowing for you.
Don’t think that applies to you? Think again.
Read more...Yves here. Remind me never to get on Bill Black’s bad side.
Read more...This lecture by professor Paul Bloom of Yale starts with the observation that religion serves no obvious adaptive purpose.
Read more...Nathan Tankus found this archival video (you are going to get a gas out of the production values…and be patient with the set up, it takes a few minutes for the video to get going).
Read more...A new paper by Mark Weisbrot and Helene Jorgensen of CEPR have managed to unearth a dirty little secret: the IMF doesn’t just prescribe broadly similar policies in its Article IV consultations, it looks like its hands out the same medicine. We’ve used the metaphor of breaking countries on the rack, but cutting them to fit a Procrustean bed might be more apt.
Read more...A recent podcast with Philip Pilkington expanding on a recent piece discussing Hayek and the foundations of neoliberalism got very positive comments, and also covered more ground than his post on this topic on Naked Capitalism, so we thought readers would enjoy it. Plus the Irish accents are a nice change of pace from bland standard ‘Murkican.
Read more...By Philip Pilkington, a writer and research assistant at Kingston University in London. You can follow him on Twitter @pilkingtonphil
While Robert Nelson’s book “Economics as Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond” has some remarkable blind spots as far as the quasi-religious nature of neoclassical economics is concerned, it nevertheless opens up an important question: what should economics be, religion or science?
Read more...Americans are cynical about politicians. Congressional approval ratings were mired just above single-digit levels in 2012, hitting 10% twice. An expression of utter disdain. But the French—with their economy spiraling deeper into crisis—expressed disdain for their political class, as they call it, in another way: with a desire for authoritarian leadership, a “real leader” who would “reestablish order.”
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