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Report card on a failing economic system
On Friday, May 6, the Federal Reserve released data showing that consumer credit (debt) has been accelerating since the fourth quarter of last year, with revolving credit (largely credit card debt) speeding up at an even greater pace since the third quarter of 2021.
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U.S. Federal Reserve says its goal is ‘to get wages down’
U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said his goal is “to get wages down,” complaining workers have too much power in the labor market. Economist Michael Hudson says this is “junk economics,” and corporate monopolies are driving inflation, not wages.
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Fighting inflation excuse for class warfare
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR. A class war is being waged in the name of fighting inflation. All too many central bankers are raising interest rates at the expense of working people’s families, supposedly to check price increases.
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One million people killed by capitalism
One million people in the United States have died of COVID-19. Coronavirus was written on their death certificates as the cause.
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The inhumanity of capitalism
For over two years now, the world has been facing a pandemic the like of which has not been seen for a century, and which has already taken 15 million lives according to the WHO, without being anywhere near an end.
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Economist Michael Hudson on decline of dollar, sanctions war, imperialism, financial parasitism
Economist Michael Hudson discusses the decline of the U.S. dollar, the sanctions war on Russia, his concept of “free-trade imperialism,” and financial parasitism.
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Turning the Earth into money w/ John Bellamy Foster
This week, Grace talks to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. They discuss Marx’s theory of nature and the relationship between humanity and nature under capitalism.
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Inflation: wages versus profits
Prices of commodities can be broken down into the three main components: labour costs (v= the value of labour power in Marxist terminology, non-labour inputs (c =the constant capital consumed, and the “mark-up” of profits over the first two components (s = surplus value appropriated by the capitalist owners). P = v + c + s.
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Kathy Boudin: a great life and a great loss
Celebrating the life and mourning the loss of our co-founder and co-director Kathy Boudin.
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Labor organizing in the U.S. in 2022: the anti-worker, anti-union corporate agenda
Late capitalism has exposed the drastic inequalities inherent to our neoliberal economy.
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It’s past time for a $15 federal minimum wage
President Biden’s 2022 State of the Union Address included a call for a $15 federal minimum wage. According to an Economic Policy Institute study, a phased increase to a $15 federal minimum wage by 2025 would raise the earnings of 32 million workers—21% of the workforce, no small thing.
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Toward building a “New World”
If you really want changes requiring the dismantling of capitalism–and this does include the changes necessary to the imagined “green economy,”–then you will join in these efforts rather than condemning the project that inspires them.
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I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread: The Seventeenth Newsletter (2022)
On April 19, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its annual World Economic Outlook, which forecasted a severe slowdown in global growth along with soaring prices. ‘For 2022, inflation is projected at 5.7 percent in advanced economies and 8.7 percent in emerging market and developing economies–1.8 and 2.8 percentage points higher than projected in… January.’
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Understanding war: Lenin’s ‘imperialism: The highest stage of capitalism’
The outbreak of World War I ushered in a new age of barbarism in Europe.
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2005-22′: The crisis of western capitalism behind the left and far right radicalism
It is simply impossible to understand what is going on now in the world if we don’t take into consideration the crisis the globally dominant Western capitalism has been facing since 2008.
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Scoring the U.S. working class: expropriation and digitalization
Working-class people in the United States are now at a turning point–whether to compliantly return to the pre-Covid conditions capital set for them, or to shift toward a new militancy toward capitalism.
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I’m sick of the Oscars, Will Smith and Chris Rock
As usual, the blatant hypocrisy of the capitalist system is so sickening it turns my stomach. And, it should turn yours also. Just to be clear, I don’t care one bit about Will Smith, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett-Smith, the Oscars, the U.S. government, capitalism, any of it.
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Capitalism’s crimes against nature — interview with author Jeff Sparrow
Australian socialist Jeff Sparrow is a writer, broadcaster and Guardian Australia columnist. He spoke to climate activist Martin Empson about his book, ‘Crimes Against Nature—Capitalism and Global Heating.’
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War and the challenge of human rights in the United States and beyond
The U.S. justifies wars of aggression in the name of human rights. The term has no meaning domestically either, as the people’s needs are subordinated to those of the ruling class.
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Globalisation and the relocation of capital and labour
The twin phenomena associated with contemporary globalisation, of migration of capital from the metropolis to parts of the third world, and of migration of labour from the erstwhile second world to the metropolis, have the effect of weakening the working class movement everywhere.