Subjects Archives: Economic Theory

Graham Hubbs speaks with Scott Ferguson and Andrés Bernal about the relationship between Modern Monetary Theory and philosophy. Associate Professor & chair of the department of politics & philosophy at the University of Idaho, Hubbs convened a conference panel on Modern Monetary Theory at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association in January 2021.

Economists typically use GDP per capita to assess how rich a country is. It is basically a measure of the average income per person. If journalists cared to be at all precise when they say that Venezuela had once been “rich,” then that’s a statistic they’d cite.

According to an Economic Policy Institute report, between 28 and 47 percent of U.S. private sector workers are subject to noncompete agreements.

For any working period—whether it be a day, an hour, or five minutes—part of the period is “necessary labor” and another part is “surplus labor.”

Just as a household cannot “live beyond its means” forever, and sooner or later its creditors not only stop giving loans but take away the assets of the household for defaulting on loan repayment, likewise, the State cannot “live beyond its means” forever and go on borrowing ad infinitum; sooner or later its creditors stop giving loans and even attach its assets.

Cory Doctorow joins Money on the Left to discuss what Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) means for building digital commons. He walks us through his important critical genealogy of Intellectual Property law as well as his contribution to the urgent anti-monopoly accord called the “Access to Knowledge Treaty.”

Many activists in the United States are working to build a movement for a Green New Deal transformation of the economy. Not surprisingly, a growing number look to the World War II conversion of the U.S. economy from civilian to military production for inspiration and policy ideas. 

On 25 February 2021, the Chinese government announced that extreme poverty had been abolished in China, a country of 1.4 billion people. This historic victory is a culmination of a seven-decade-long process that began with the Chinese Revolution of 1949.

Urban crime is the golden child of local media, as recent FAIR coverage (6/21/21) has shown. But as FAIR’s Julie Hollar recently noted, the amount of attention given to a topic does not always reflect the seriousness of the situation.

The answer is plain to see: the two explanations are not contradictory. A combination of the two enables us to understand what has been happening right before our eyes.

The first decades of the 21st century have been a gilded age for the world’s super-rich. While the mass of humanity has struggled through successive economic crises, accelerating climate and environmental breakdown and now a devastating global pandemic, the billionaire class’s wealth has piled up to ever more dizzying heights.

On February 25, 2021, China’s President Xi Jinping announced that his country of 1.4 billion people had pulled its people out of poverty as it is defined internationally.

In this episode, we’re joined by Rohan Grey (@rohangrey), President of the Modern Money Network, Director of the National Jobs for All Coalition, Research Fellow at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, and JSD student at Cornell Law school. Our conversation is dedicated to Rohan’s current work on the political, economic, and cultural implications of money’s digital future.

In this timely book, Matthew Brown and Rhian E. Jones explore new forms of democratic collectivism across the UK, writes Hilary Wainwright.

Last month, the two regions were warned about missing energy intensity reduction targets.

U.S. foreign policy is increasingly promoted by billionaire-funded foundations. The neoliberal era has created individuals with incredible wealth who, through “philanthropy,” flex their influence and feel good at the same time.

African leaders had come to recognize the various factors that hinder the continent’s development and seriously jeopardize the future of its peoples. The Abuja Treaty was put in place to increase economic self-reliance, promote self-sustained development, and raise the living standard of African peoples.

The promise of digital transformation is anchored in a discourse that the tech sector invented along with venture capital (VC) when they came together to lobby for reducing capital gains taxes in the late 1970s.

The series continues with analyses of how indebtedness developed in other regions of the Global South.

What is new with contemporary (global) leading corporations? If gigantic monopolies are a repeated phenomenon in capitalism’s history, why all the fuss we see every day regarding high concentration?