The information-aware and many in the medical industry are nervously watching the news about coronavirus spread and mortality rates. What we know so far isn’t pretty.
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
Climate change and the class divide
No, we’re not all in it together. Our rulers are responsible for the system that’s creating an ecological catastrophe. As that crisis intensifies, it’s exposing and intensifying the divide between us and them.
Trump touts biodefense strategy but slashes funding to detect and combat outbreaks like coronavirus
t the end of January, at a time when the coronavirus outbreak that began in China was dominating international headlines, The White House announced it was forming a new task force to address the growing crisis, one headed by the secretary of health and human services, Alex Azar.
Digital Workerism: Technology, platforms, and the circulation of workers’ struggles
The so-called platform economy–the distribution of, and access to work through websites and apps–continues to grab headlines and the imagination of policy makers, researchers, and journalists the world over. Much attention is given to its rapid expansion, its potential for further growth, and the large amounts of wealth generated through it.
No escape from low growth
Discussions on the state of the world economy centre around the likely negative impact of the novel coronavirus epidemic and the potential positive effect of the truce reflected in the “phase 1” trade deal between China and India.
The problem with private property
The conceptualisation of property in a economic sense harks back to John Locke. These days property is commonly separated into four categories.
JP Morgan economists warn of ‘catastrophic outcomes’ of human-caused climate crisis
“Don’t want to hear Greta Thunberg or Extinction Rebellion? Try J.P. Morgan instead.”
Politicizing water in Chile
Chile is today in the midst of an unprecedented constituent process 30 years after the return of democracy, where the possibility of a new constitution has opened a discussion about what sort of country we want, and which rights should be enshrined in the drafting of this fundamental document.
Beyond the Permanent State of Emergency
Not long before the Twin Towers fell, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben resurrected a concept anathema to the liberal notion of progress—the idea that unrelenting crisis is not necessarily exceptional. Agamben employed the image of “the Camp” to describe the space and time “when the state of exception begins to become the rule.”
Democracy in Focus: Follow the dark money…
Greater Britain, as we might call it, has over the past 70 years transformed itself from the largest-ever land empire to a sprawling financial one: a network of tax havens and money laundries stashing cash for the world’s oligarchs, mafiosi, gangsters and hedge funds.
If Bloomberg wants to buy an election, he should run as a Republican against Trump—not sabotage Democrats
The mega-billionaire should be running against Trump in the Republican primaries, not as a Democrat. If he actually cared about this country more than stroking his massive ego that is exactly what he would be doing.
Health check: U.S. manufacturing is in trouble
President Trump is all in, touting his success in rebuilding U.S. manufacturing. For example, in his state of the union address he claimed: We are restoring our nation’s manufacturing might, even though predictions were that this could never be done. After losing 60,000 factories under the previous two administrations, America has now gained 12,000 new […]
No excuses–we have to shut down the fossil fuel industry
In the face of an ecological catastrophe as enormous and terrifying as this season’s bushfires, you might think that policy might begin to shift, as those in power face up to the reality of human-induced climate change. But you’d be wrong.
Capitalism, socialism and over-production crises
Unlike capitalism, socialism avoids any waste or slack, such as is caused by an over-production crisis, by raising the consumption of workers appropriately to avert it.
The climate and the fat tail risk
My gap year ends in August, but it doesn’t take a college degree in economics to realise that our remaining 1,5° carbon budget and ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and investments don’t add up.
The distinct perspective of a “Little Leftist Union”
In 1949, the UE national convention voted to withhold per capita payments to the Congress of Industrial Organizations until the CIO, of which UE was the third-largest affiliate at the time, took steps to stop other CIO unions from raiding the UE. The CIO responded by expelling UE, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and […]
I am tired of holding other worlds in my fist
In November 2019, the Bolivian army–with a nudge from the shadows–told its President Evo Morales Ayma to resign. Morales would eventually go to Mexico and then seek asylum in Argentina. Jeanine Áñez, a far-right politician who was not in the line of succession, seized power; the military, the fascistic civil society groups, and sections of […]
The Iowa fiasco and the Democrats’ shadowy plot to stop Bernie
Yogi Berra, the great Yankees catcher, had the memorable line, “It’s like deja vu all over again.” Bernie Sanders supporters might have been thinking the same thing after the fiasco of the Iowa caucuses.
The blockade, a weapon that causes more death than war
It deliberately affects defenseless civilians, such as children, the elderly and the sick. The US blockade against Cuba is the most severe and prolonged applied against any country, but it is estimated that one third of the world’s population suffers its effects: there are more than eight thousand sanctions in 39 countries.
Rosa Luxemburg and debt as an imperialist instrument
In her book titled The Accumulation of Capital, published in 1913, Rosa Luxemburg devoted an entire chapter to international loans in order to show how the great capitalist powers of the time used the credits granted by their bankers to the countries of the periphery to exercise economic, military and political domination on the latter.
