Marshall Auerback: Top 5 Reasons Why Raising the Minimum Wage Is Good for You and Me
A raise in the minimum wage is smart economics and beneficial to society. So what are we waiting for?
Read more...Category Archives: Social values
Obama’s Second Term Agenda: Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and/or Medicaid
By Matt Stoller, a political analyst on Brand X with Russell Brand, and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller
This is probably the least important Presidential election since the 1950s. As an experienced political hand told me, the two candidates are speaking not to the voters, but to the big money. They hold the same views, pursue the same policies, and are backed by similar interests. Mitt Romney implemented Obamacare in Massachusetts, or Obama implemented Romneycare nationally. Both are pro-choice or anti-choice as political needs change, both tend to be hawkish on foreign policy, both favor tax cuts for businesses, and both believe deeply in a corrupt technocratic establishment.
So while the election lumbers on like the death rattles of the wounded animal known American democracy, no one on either side is asking what the plan is for the next term.
Read more...Bill Black: The Right’s Schadenfreude as Their Austerity Policies Devastate Europe
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.
This column was prompted in part by reading RJ Eskow’s column, which alerted me to Anne Applebaum’s September 13, 2010 column celebrating Britain’s embrace of austerity and the Conservative Party.
I was already planning a piece responding to Applebaum’s Washington Post column about the consequences of European austerity published on July 25, 2012 (her birthday) and the contrast to a Wall Street Journal news story that same day announcing that austerity had, as we predicted, thrown Britain back into recession when I read Eskow’s column.
She reveals her real target – she wants to destroy the social programs that have improved the lives of the working class.
Read more...“What Makes You Proud to Work in the Financial Services Industry?”
Matt Stoller found this corporate PR video extolling the virtues of working in banking. A classic example of the Upton Sinclair saying, “It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Some striking elements:
Read more...Lynn Parramore: Did the Youth Unemployment Crisis Play a Role in the Colorado Shooting?
By Lynn Parramore, a contributing editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet
So far, there’s not a whole lot known about James Eagan Holmes, the 24-year old whom police say fatally shot 12 people and injured dozens more in a suburban Denver movie theater during the premiere of the new Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises.” As the nation grieves for the families of the victims, questions about the alleged perpetrator are swirling.
What we do know paints a picture of a young man who might have reasonably harbored high expectations of a successful life.
Read more...Scotland Debates Independence and Launching New Currency
Introduction by Philip Pilkington
The Real News Network has recently run an excellent piece on Scottish independence. As this clip shows, the Scottish National Party is a breath of fresh air given the destruction of the British Labour Party by arch-imperialist Tony Blair and his Thatcherite cronies during the 1990s. The SNP is not only offering Scots a break with a past that was, on occasion, less than edifying but they are also offering them a new form of politics — that is, a return to the sort of social democratic, forward-looking governance that Britain lost after New Labour solidified the victory of neoliberalism in the elections of 1997.
Read more...Is a Great Grey Exodus from America Starting?
Although there is no shortage of victims of the financial crisis, one group that has generally been missed is the middle aged and elderly. Yes, there are reports of people in their 40s and 50s moving in with their children or other relatives, but for the most part, this cohort does not get much attention.
Yet it isn’t hard to see how grim their prospects are.
Read more...“Do Business Schools Incubate Criminals?”
Luigi Zingales, who teaches at the University of Chicago’s business school, had an op-ed in Bloomberg provocatively titled “Do Business Schools Incubate Criminals?” He argues that business schools are “partly to blame” for the decline in ethical standards in the business world, and urges that ethics not be taught as a separate course by lightweight profs, but integrated into all courses.
This piece is so backwards I don’t quite know where to begin.
Read more...Is Public Ownership A Solution?
Real News Network presented a two part interview with Gar Alperovitz, professor of political economy at the University of Maryland, on why and where public provision of services might be preferable to private sector solutions. Alperovitz pointed out how the growth expectations for public companies are at odds with resource conservation and how their rampant short-termism stunts investment. Some economists have recently taken a systematic look at the latter problem.
Read more...Fifty Shades of Capitalism: Pain and Bondage in the American Workplace
By Lynn Parramore, a contributing editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet
If the ghost of Ayn Rand were to suddenly manifest in your local bookstore, the Dominatrix of Capitalism would certainly get a thrill thumbing through the pages of E.L. James’ blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey.
Read more...Is a New “Take No Prisoners” a Model for Social Change?
Lambert pointed to a recent Harvard Business Review blog post that posited the question of whether it would be possible to engineer a mirror image of the Stanford Prison experiment, in which subjects were put in a mock prison setting, cast either as guards or inmates. The experiment had to be aborted within days as the guards quickly became sadistic. But could a setting be created in which good behavior would be fostered? The pitch from the post:
Read more...How Out-of-Control Credit Markets Threaten Liberty, Democracy and Economic Security
By Ed Harrison, the founder of Credit Writedowns. Cross posted from Alternet.
The awful experience of the Great Depression made clear to many economists and laymen alike that credit is at the heart of a functioning capitalist system. Without access to credit, many businesses die and many individuals and households run out of money and go bankrupt.
Yet in popular media accounts from the Great Depression, the focus is almost always on the stock market and the Great Crash of 1929. You hardly ever hear that it was the contraction of credit and the seizing up of credit markets that made the Great Depression so traumatic.
Read more...Is Spain Going the Way of Greece?
In the “great minds work alike” category, both some readers (Hugh and LaMarchaNegra) and some of my investor e-mail correspondents (Scott, Ed Harrison, Marshall Auerback) took notice of how things are looking bad on the way to worse. Despite an unemployment rate of 25% and rising social unrest, the government just increased sales taxes to 21%. Ed Harrison sent a note to his Credit Writedowns Pro customers describing how Spain’s problem isn’t its government debt levels per se, but its deficits and the way it is soon to be saddled by regional debts and bank bailout costs. And because some of the creditor nations are dead set against debt mutualization, Spain will need to find a way to deal with its banking system losses.
Read more...Does the American Elite Want Real Public Education?
This Real News Network segment tackles the ugly topic of whether the deterioration of public education in the US is by design. You might also want to see the earlier shows in this series, the first on Obama’s educational policies, the second on Romney’s.
Read more...Eurozone Screws Spain’s Citizens
Yves here. Delusional Economics discussed earlier how hapless Spanish depositors, who’d been sold bank equity products as deposit equivalents, were at risk of being crammed down en masse. That move appears to be proceeding as planned. NC readers confirmed his earlier take, that this abuse of unsophisticated savers was likely to have serious social and political repercussions.
By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
A draft Memorandum of understanding for the Spanish bank bailout became available overnight (available below).
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