Lynn Parramore: The Depressing Tale of How Greedy Financial Titans Crushed Innovation and Destroyed Our Economy
Whatever happened to innovation in America?
Read more...Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class
Michael Hudson Shreds Obama’s Orwellian Speech on Middle Class Prosperity
Michael Hudson was so incensed by what he called a “Blairesque” speech by Obama on Wednesday that he took it upon himself to comment on its all-too-frequent sleights of hand and outright fabrications
Read more...Nathan Tankus: Marx on Ireland, Then and Now
There are many seminal thinkers who are so well known they’re never read. This category includes Adam Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus, Immanuel Kant, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Fredrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes and many, many others.
One thinker I’d like to focus on is Karl Marx.
Read more...The Decline and Fall of Detroit
The bankruptcy filing and underlying train wreck of the once prosperous city of Detroit carries so much symbolic and practical baggage as to be beyond the scope of a single post. So rather than attempt to do a deep dive, particularly since the media and various experts are still weighing in, I thought I’d offer some high level observations and let readers provide more information, observations, and links.
Read more...An Eye For A Rubber Bullet: The Dangers Of Non-Lethal Weapons
Yves here. While I prefer to emphasize finance and economics posts over more political ones during the week, this one on the peril posed by so-called non-lethal weapons struck me as important.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: The Annotated Wolfgang Schäuble (PR Versus Reality, European Periphery Edition)
Yves here. Varoufakis performs the important service of translating what is effectively a formal communication from Germany on its stance towards subject states, meaning the Eurozone periphery.
Read more...Beyond Debt and Growth: An Interview with Robert Pollin
Yves here. As readers likely recall, Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst wrote a paper, “Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff,” which revealed serious methodological problems with one of the linchpin papers used to justify cutting government spending even in times of recession. Robert Pollin here discusses some of the bigger issues in the political and economic debates on austerity and the aftermath of the financial crisis.
Read more...Chris Hedges: “America is a Tinderbox”
A Real News Network interview with Chris Hedges precipitated a lively, thoughtful discussion of the mess we are in as a civilization and whether we can pull ourselves out of what looks like a nosedive.
I thought readers might enjoy continuing the exchange, and the latest release in this Real News Network series should provide ample grist for debate.
Read more...Why Are Americans’ Life Expectancies Shorter than Those of People in Other Advanced Economies?
Yves here. The high social cost of inequality – the fact that it shortens the lives of people at the top of the pecking order along with the lower orders – has long been excluded from discussion in polite company in the US.
Read more...How the AMA Engages in Government-Sanctioned Price Fixing
One of hedge fund manager David Einhorn’s saying is “no matter how bad you think it is, it’s worse.” An article in Washington Monthly, Special Deal by Haley Sweetland Edwards, deep dives into one big and largely hidden reason why medical costs in the US are out of control and are unlikely to be reined in any time soon.
Read more...TransPacific Partnership to Let Foreign Investors Gut Regulations, Keep Big Ag Subsidies
Only a small part of the TransPacific Partnership is about trade as such. Most chapters are on other issues, like services, investment, government procurement, disciplines on state-owned enterprises and intellectual property.
Joining the TPP or similar free trade agreements will mean the country having to make often drastic changes to existing policies, laws and regulations, which will in turn affect the domestic economy and society.
Read more...The Global Race for Inventors
Yves here. I wonder if the pattern described in this article, which is basically a brain drain of inventors to the US, is playing a meaningful role in the degradation of public education in the US. Why do the elites need to care about home-grown “talent” if they exploit the investments in schooling made by other countries?
Read more...McDonalds Tells Workers to Toil 70 Hours a Week, Use Ripoff Payroll Cards as Part of “Financial Literacy”
The poor have to endure not just the indignity of struggling to survive, but also from having to listen to pious lectures on how they really can proper on their meager incomes.
Read more...Econ4 on the New Economy
Econ4, a group of heterodox economists, has released a short video and a statement on the “new economy” which they define as more sustainable and equitable forms of organizing “productive” activity and the resources that support them.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Europe Resorts to Authoritarianism to Paper Over Banking and Austerity Failures
Yves here. Because the European slow-motion train wreck is turning out to be particularly slow, it’s almost become background noise in the US, almost a lesser version of the now two lost decades in Japan. But what is happing in Europe is less benign and less likely to be able to continue anywhere near that long.
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