We, the student and precarious workers of Europe, Tunisia, Japan, the US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru and Argentina, met in Paris over the weekend of the 11th-13th of February, 2011 to discuss and organize a common network based on our common struggles. Students from Maghreb and Gambia tried to come but France refused them entry. […]
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
The Great Recession and Its Aftermath: Causes vs. Symptoms
There is much confusion about the current economic situation, among left media and organizations as well as in the mainstream media. This is certainly understandable given its complexity. But what many are referring to as causes are symptoms of a deeper underlying problem — in other words, sparks that produced the Great Recession by igniting […]
Public Sector Squeeze
A national campaign is now fully launched to make local public sector employees pick up a major share of the costs of economic crisis. Years of rising spending and falling revenue have carved a path of destruction through federal, state, and local budgets. Deficits and debts have mounted, eroding taxpayer support for government spending […]
Online Calculator Estimates Retirement Income, Showing Importance of Social Security
In his State of the Union address, President Obama insisted on the need to protect Social Security and ensure that future generations can depend on it. Nevertheless, it appears that some in Congress are considering major changes to the program. Unfortunately, many people do not understand the program’s solvency or the likely importance that it […]
Distress, Not Success
On January 15, the New York Times ran an interesting piece on older workers. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited in the story, the US workforce is a lot older now than it was at the onset of the Great Recession in December 2007. Total employment of workers under the age of 55 […]
Downturn Continues to Lower Union Membership
The labor market recession continued to exact a toll on union membership, which fell sharply in 2010. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unionized share of the U.S. workforce dropped to 11.9 percent last year from 12.3 percent in 2009. The private sector unionization rate fell to 6.9 percent in 2010, from 7.2 […]
Families Divided by US Deportation
Past US administrations have deported illegal immigrants, but under President Obama the process has accelerated. This video was first released by Al Jazeera on 19 January 2011. | Print
State of the Dream 2011: Austerity for Whom?
The attack on the public sector through pay freezes, furloughs, layoffs, and proposed cuts is also an attack on Black and Latino workers. Cuts to social safety nets hit Blacks and Latinos hardest. Video by United for a Fair Economy. Read United for a Fair Economy, “State of the Dream 2011: Austerity for Whom?,” […]
The Political Economy of ‘Democracy Promotion’
14 January 2011 Where are the ‘democracy promoters’ on the Tunisian uprising?, asks Marc Lynch. It’s a fair question: Thus far, a month into the massive demonstrations rocking Tunisia, the Washington Post editorial page has published exactly zero editorials about Tunisia. For that matter, the Weekly Standard, another magazine which frequently claims the mantle of […]
Income, Inequality, and Food Prices: A Critique of Broda, Leibtag, and Weinstein’s “The Role of Prices in Measuring the Poor’s Living Standards”
Introduction and Summary: In “The Role of Prices in Measuring the Poor’s Living Standards,” Christian Broda, Ephriam Leibtag, and David E. Weinstein (2009) use proprietary data — the 2005 Nielsen Homescan dataset — to analyze differences by income level in the prices paid for food. They find that Nielsen households with incomes above $60,000 pay […]
A New Year for Capitalism
“Happy New Swindle!” Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain. The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 3 January 2011. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print
Moral Hazards, Moral Buzzards
Is it a good idea to let the foreclosures roll on? A lot more than that, say the banking and mortgage industries, among others. “Home repo” is critical to economic recovery, they argue. Stopping foreclosures would cut the legs off a still-wobbly rebound. In the industry’s view, the fewer foreclosures, the fewer resales; the […]
They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To! Why Even the Best Post-war Economist Ended Up a Tragic Figure
The Crash of 2008 and its ghastly aftermath was not just an economic crisis but also a crisis aided and abetted by economics. Previously I have written about the Econobubble (the handmaiden of the “real” Bubble) and the toxic theories of economists who were very recently rewarded with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Following […]
Morales Repeals Decree Raising Fuel Prices
Bolivian President Evo Morales repealed on Friday night the decree issued five days ago to raise gasoline prices, after a meeting with his cabinet, trade unions, and social organizations in La Paz.
Bolivia Raises Fuel Prices to Protect Economy and Stop Subsidizing Smugglers
The Bolivian government approved on Sunday a decree to bring fuel prices in line with regional prices, “to protect the economy and stop subsidizing smugglers,” which adjusts gasoline and diesel prices while keeping frozen the prices of liquefied petroleum gas and vehicular natural gas. At a press conference, Vice President Álvaro García Linera, temporarily […]
Decoding Economic Ideology
Introduction Molière’s 1670 his play, The Bourgeois Gentleman, presented before the court of Louis XIV, mocked a foolish, social-climbing merchant. In his effort to remake himself, the merchant takes lessons to help him pass as an aristocrat. In a basic lesson on language, he is both surprised and delighted to learn he had been speaking […]
The Twilight of Capitalism?
In recent years, radical geographer David Harvey has emerged as one of the leading theorists and popularizers of Marxian political economy in the English-speaking world. In books such as The New Imperialism and A Brief History of Neoliberalism, as well as his popular online courses in Volume I of Marx’s Capital, Harvey has articulated a […]
Notes on Contemporary Imperialism
Phases of Imperialism Lenin dated the imperialist phase of capitalism, which he associated with monopoly capitalism, from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the process of centralization of capital had led to the emergence of monopoly in industry and among banks. The coming together (coalescence) of the capitals in these two spheres led to […]
Mancession: Gender, Occupational Segregation, and the Structural Transformation of Capitalism
Nancy Folbre and Paul Jay
Paul Jay: Nancy Folbre, in her blog on the New York Times, wrote the following: “The Great Recession has sometimes been dubbed the Mancession because it drove unemployment among men higher than unemployment among women.” So how is this affecting families? How is this affecting the future outlook for the population as a whole […]
Where’s the Legitimacy Crisis?
In her excellent 2003 book Forces of Labor, Beverly Silver discerns within the history of capitalism an ongoing tension between the system’s simultaneous need for both profitability and legitimacy. That is, it needs to ensure that capital can squeeze as much value as possible out of the workers while making sure that it doesn’t exploit […]
