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  • Monthly Review Essays

About Martin Hart-Landsberg

Martin Hart-Landsberg is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon; and Adjunct Researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences, Gyeongsang National University, South Korea. His areas of teaching and research include political economy, economic development, international economics, and the political economy of East Asia. He is also a member of the Workers' Rights Board (Portland, Oregon) and maintains a blog Reports from the Economic Front where this article first appeared.
  • 20 Questions that Underscore the State of U.S. Manufacturing - Cornwell Jackson

    U.S. manufacturing is far from healthy and the main reason appears to be globalization

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on July 21, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    Public awareness and acceptance of the negative consequences of corporate-driven globalization on U.S. workers has grown dramatically over the last years, aided in part by Donald Trump’s attacks on trade agreements like NAFTA.

  • migration-rates.png

    Ignore their threats, tax the rich

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on July 9, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    In most states in the United States, the rich have enjoyed ever lower rates of taxation while working people have suffered from inadequately funded public services.

  • Income and Wealth Inequality - Bernie Sanders - YouTube

    The U.S. is a world leader in income and wealth inequality

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on June 28, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    A recent article published in the American Economic Review, “Global Inequality Dynamics: New Findings from WID.world,” draws upon the World Wealth and Income Database to examine trends in global inequality.

  • Go on, bet the farm | The Economist

    The Chinese economy: problems and prospects

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on June 5, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    The Chinese economy is big. In 2017, it was the world’s biggest based on purchasing power parity. Its output equaled $23.12 trillion, compared with $19.9 trillion for the EU and $19.3 trillion for the U.S.

  • Living on the edge: Americans in a time of “prosperity”

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on May 27, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    These are supposed to be the good times—with our current economic expansion poised to set a record as the longest in U.S. history.

  • Rich get richer and poor get poorer

    Corporate taxes and false promises: U.S. workers and the 2017 tax cuts and jobs act

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on May 17, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    In December 2017 the Congress approved and the President signed into law the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

  • Teachers movements

    What next for the teacher’s movement?

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on May 3, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    Public school teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona have won meaningful salary gains for themselves, and in several cases other school workers, and real although limited increases in education spending.

  • Justice for our teachers (Photo: necn.com)

    Public school teacher strikes show workplace organizing pays off

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on April 22, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    While those at the top of the income pyramid continue to celebrate economic trends, the great majority of working people continue to struggle to make ends meet

  • Trade Tensions Between The U.S. and China

    What’s driving trade tensions between the U.S. and China

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on April 12, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    There is a lot of concern over the possibility of a trade war between China and the US. In early April President Trump announced that his administration was considering levying $100 billion of additional tariffs on Chinese exports, after the Chinese government responded to a previously proposed U.S. tariff hike on Chinese goods of $50 billion by announcing its own equivalent tariff hikes on U.S. exports. And the Chinese government has made clear it will again respond in kind if these new tariffs are actually imposed.

  • U.S. trade deficits, Trump trade policies, and capitalist globalization

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on March 22, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    Understandably concerned about the consequences of the large and sustained U.S. trade deficit, many workers have grown tired of waiting for so-called market forces to produce balance. Thus, they cheer Trump administration promises to correct the imbalance through tariffs or reworked trade agreements that will supposedly end unfair foreign trade practices.

  • U.S. workers and their decades of lost earnings

    U.S. workers and their decades of lost earnings

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on March 5, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    It happened gradually, but thanks to the U.S. media, economic news has largely been reduced to stock market reporting. Want to know how the economy is doing? Check the S&P 500 Index. Want to know whether the latest Trump proposal is good or bad? Check the S&P 500 Index.

  • Globalization and U.S. labor’s falling share of national output

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on February 23, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    The decline in the payroll share of output is class power at work: unfortunately theirs, not ours.

  • Korea at the 2018 Winter Olympics

    North Korea in the age of Trump

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on February 12, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    On January 23, Hyun Lee, the managing editor of ZoominKorea, and I spoke at a UCLA Center for Korean Studies sponsored event titled “North Korea in the Age of Trump.” I went first, offering a critical perspective on U.S. foreign policy towards Korea, North and South. Hyun Lee then talked about the importance of Science […]

  • Economic troubles

    Signs of economic trouble ahead

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on February 1, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    The current expansion has gone on for 102 months. Only the expansions from March 1991 to March 2001 (120 months) and from February 1961 to December 1969 (106 months) are longer. Unfortunately, growth during this expansion has been slow and the gains have largely gone to a very few. And there are signs of economic trouble ahead.

  • Created with Highcharts 6.0.4 Median Family Wealth for Those Born 1943–51 White Black 30s and 40s 40s and 50s 50s and 60s $0 $100 000 $200 000 $300 000 $400 ... (Image Credit: Urban Institute)

    Too many whites are in denial about the extent of race-based economic inequality

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on January 19, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    A recently published paper by three Yale scholars reveals “that Americans, on average, systematically overestimate the extent to which society has progressed toward racial economic equality, driven largely by overestimates of current racial equality.”

  • Median household wealth by race

    Class, race, and U.S. wealth inequality

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on January 3, 2018 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    People tend to have a distorted picture of U.S. capitalism’s operation, believing that the great majority of Americans are doing well, benefiting from the system’s long-term growth and profit generation. Unfortunately, this is not true. Median wealth has been declining, leaving growing numbers of working people increasingly vulnerable to the ups and downs of economic […]

  • Strike

    Taxes, inequality, and class power

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on December 22, 2017 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    No doubt about it, the recently passed tax bill is terrible for working people.  But as Lance Taylor states in a blog post titled “Why Stopping Tax ‘Reform’ Won’t Stop Inequality”: “Inequality isn’t driven by taxes—its driven by the power of capital in relation to workers.”  Said differently we need to concentrate our efforts on shifting the balance of class power.  And that means, among other things, putting more of our energy into workplace organizing and revitalizing the trade union movement.

  • The 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances paints a grim picture of working class finances

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on December 9, 2017 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    Martin Hart-Landsberg takes a look at the tragedy of what life is like for the working class. Allowing for us to directly see what we already know, that US capitalism works to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

  • U.S. & North Korea flag

    Media complicity increases the possibility of a new Korean War

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on December 3, 2017 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    Tensions between the US and North Korea are again rising in the wake of North Korea’s November 28th test of an ICBM that experts believe has the potential to deliver a nuclear bomb to cities on the east coast of the US, including Washington D.C.

  • Woody Wood / CC BY-NC 2.0

    Just say no to NAFTA

    Originally published: Reports from the Economic Front on November 18, 2017 (more by Reports from the Economic Front)

    The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is unpopular with many working people in the United States, who correctly blame it for encouraging capital flight, job losses, deindustrialization, and wage suppression.

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Also By Martin Hart-Landsberg in Monthly Review Magazine

  • Planning an Ecologically Sustainable and Democratic Economy: Challenges and Tasks July 01, 2023
  • U.S. Economic Planning in the Second World War and the Planetary Crisis February 01, 2023
  • Lessons from Iceland October 01, 2013
  • ALBA and the Promise of Cooperative Development December 01, 2010
  • The U.S. Economy and China: Capitalism, Class, and Crisis February 01, 2010
  • Learning from ALBA and the Bank of the South: Challenges and Possibilities September 01, 2009
  • The Promise and Perils of Korean Reunification April 01, 2009
  • China, Capitalist Accumulation, and Labor May 01, 2007
  • Neoliberalism: Myths and Reality April 01, 2006

Books By Martin Hart-Landsberg

  • Capitalist Globalization: Consequences, Resistance, and Alternatives May 31, 2009

Monthly Review Essays

  • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
    Sam-Kee Cheng A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory, smoking a cigar. The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS [dollar imperialism].

    1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

Lost & Found

  • Journalism, democracy, … and class struggle
    Robert W. McChesney Bob McChesney on Saving Journalism

    Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.

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