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The Oval Office is up for grabs between Clinton and Trump, and I can’t remember the last time that I, living in a capitalist society, as a consumer, somehow ran out of options. If I can get my beer non-alcoholic and my ice cream fat-free, surely I can get my presidential candidate non-corporate and scandal-free, right?

How did we get here? Trump is a shameless liar with no experience in political office; while Clinton has too much of the wrong kind of experience — for example, promoting fracking and selling arms around the world. We are trapped between Scylla and Charybdis. …

Everyday political discourse commonly reduces the significance of elections to individual personalities: one candidate wins, another candidate loses. In legislative elections, this way of assessing an election is perfectly legitimate.

Matters are more complicated, however, when considering executive branch elections, whether at the mayor, governor or presidential level. The executive branch itself is a large army of people: administrators, program managers, analysts, researchers and all the other people who do the everyday work of government, and who turn broad policy priorities into concrete action steps.  …

Noted feminist, political scientist, and photographer Jo Freeman went to the Republican National Convention. Amongst the madness, Freeman managed to capture a humanity rarely seen on the political stage. It’s a reminder to us all that, at the end of the day, the foundation of our nation’s political economy lies with the American people. Here they are. 

Ridicule is Donald Trump’s most prominent rhetorical strategy. Like the schoolyard bully, his attempts to humiliate and dominate others seize on a snippet of public identity, physical appearance or personal history. You can access many of these taunts on his Twitter account: in case you don’t want to sift through the whole thing, The New York Times has created a list of the 250 people, places and things Trump has most frequently heaped with shame here. 

These tweets, and Trump’s verbal assaults, purposely do not respond to facts or reveal new information that might respond to criticism. Instead, they are designed to shame and overwhelm people who ask questions or in any way impede his path to political success. He has characterized The New York Times as “failing” newspaper; claimed that Jeb Bush came out against Super PACs to obscure his “failed campaign;” and called for a boycott against Macy’s, a “very disloyal company.” …

The Brazilian Federal Constitution speaks of a “free market” (Art. 170) and describes the state as a “normative and regulating agent of economic activity” (Art. 174). Unfortunately, reality is completely different. We have two worlds in Brazil: the first is the naïve utopia of the legislator; the other is the crude practice of political gangsters. Life as it is differs substantially from life as it should be.

As pointed out by Professor Douglass North, economic growth is directly linked to the quality of a nation’s institutions. Prosperous countries are buttressed by strong, serious and efficient institutions; poor countries are infected by weak, dishonest and exploitative ones. 

The fact is that we do not have capitalism in Brazil. Our free market is state-directed, while our “free competition” favors powerful…

The current situation in the United States presents a seeming paradox. On the one hand, the US economy is about to enter its eighth consecutive year of recovery, and in the first months of 2016, the unemployment rate fell below 5%, its lowest level since the beginning of the economic crisis of 2007–2009. On the other hand, there seems to be general discontent about the state of the economy. For example, according to various public opinion polls, the principal concern of voters in this year’s presidential primaries has been “economy/jobs”. This concern has been a main — if not, the main — factor behind upsets in both races.

However, if we look a little closer, the paradox resolves. Figure 1 depicts the path of real GDP from the trough to the peak of each post–World War II economic recovery, at quarterly frequency. …

June marks the fifth month of Nuit Debout (Standing Night) a movement that sprung from earlier protests by young people against the French government’s labor law reform. On March 31, 2016, an informal group of a dozen citizens from Fakir, a left-wing activist magazine, used the #mars40 Twitter hashtag to launch a public demonstration in and subsequent occupation of Place de la République in Paris. Since its debut, a crowd has gathered every evening on the square. Participants and activists come together to share their discontents, proposals, and ideals for a new society. Nuit Debout has now become an international movement, with gatherings in more than 266 cities in France and 130 other cities in Europe.

Focusing on this movement, our aim here is twofold: first, …