Matthew Cunningham-Cook: Five Reasons Tariffs Are Great
Saying tariffs could be a good thing is close to a taboo in economics. Is that distaste justified?
Read more...Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class
“Summer” Rerun: “Why America Will Need Some Elements of a Welfare State”
In 2007, the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf Wolf concluded that America needed some form of a welfare state. His argument is as valid now as then. Yet it is hard to imagine that anyone would make it now, particularly in light of the effort of soi-disant liberals to pretend that Obamacare insurance policies bear any resemblance to “universal health care”.
Read more...Debunking the Magnitude of Markets: A Holiday Story
Why markets, the god of neoliberalism, are not what they are cracked up to be.
Read more...The Sneaky Way Austerity Got Sold to the Public Like Snake Oil
How a budget approach cloaked in the aura of science and technical jargon became a tool for promoting austerity.
Read more...Bill Moyers: The Plutocrats Are Winning. Don’t Let Them!
How citizens must fight plutocrats if they are to have any hope of preserving rule by the people.
Read more...Capitalism – Not China – Is to Blame for the Current Global Economic Decline
Capitalism’s “recovery” now proceeds like another speeding train headed toward contradiction and catastrophe.
Read more...What Influence Does Wall Street Have Over Candidates Clinton and Sanders?
Clinton plays with figures to understate her degree of Wall Street campaign support, and that ignores past support to the Clinton Foundation.
Read more...U.S. Corporations Don’t Need Tax Breaks on Foreign Profits
Why a proposal to lower the tax rate on corporate funds that are “offshore” only from a tax perspective is just another corporate gimmie.
Read more...The Predictability of Political Extremism
What’s at stake: The rise of the extreme right in the latest French election has mostly been treated as surprising or reflecting special circumstances like the November 13 Paris attacks. But a large literature linking extreme right votes to persisting depressed economic conditions suggests that longer run factors are at play.
Read more...The Fed’s New “Operation Twist”: Twisted Logic for Bank Profits at the Expense of the Real Economy
How did Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve justify their rate increase now, despite strong signs that there is little economic basis for doing so?
Call this an exercise in twisted logic, plain and simple.
Read more...Matias Vernego: Neoliberalism Resurgent: What to Expect in Argentina after Macri’s Victory
The election of businessman Mauricio Macri to the presidency in Argentina signals a rightward turn in the country and, perhaps, in South America more generally. Macri, the candidate of the right-wing Compromiso para el cambio (Commitment to Change) party, defeated Buenos Aires province governor Daniel Scioli (the Peronist party candidate) in November’s runoff election, by less than 3% of the vote.
Read more...Matthew Cunningham-Cook: How the Christie Stole New Jersey Local Government Workers’ COLA
A vignette of how pensioners are being shafted by being denied their COLA, or cost of living increase. In New Jersey, this looks to be a transfer to Wall Street.
Read more...Demise of the US Middle Class Now Official
A study by Pew gives a new look at the fall of the middle class and how the accompanying rise in income stratification is playing out.
Read more...The Importance of Wealth Concentration and Why It is So Difficult to Measure
As bad as available data says wealth concentration is, it is probably even worse.
Read more...Guess What? You Can Pay $600 a Month to be Homeless in San Francisco
Being homeless in San Francisco is not necessarily a bargain.
Read more...