Economics Archives - Page 4 of 20

North America

Can Bernie Do It?

An economist takes a hard look at the Sanders platform

November 19, 2019 • by James K. Galbraith

But is he a plausible president? By that, I don't mean in comparison to Donald Trump, as implausible a president as there ever was. Sanders is a lifetime political figure with forty years of elected experience and intimate knowledge of Capitol Hill and of the federal government. But he is ...

New York City

Local Governments Can Afford To Pay a $15 Minimum Wage

November 7, 2019 • by James Parrott

In contrast to this Congressional stalemate, there’s been a growing push in many states for higher minimum wages. Over the past decade, 29 states and the District of Columbia have raised their minimum wages above the federal floor. In the spring, Maryland and Connecticut joined New Jersey, Illinois, New York, ...

Capitalism

Conflicting Claims

Race, Capitalism & the Current Crisis: Conundrums for Those Who Envisage a Socialist Future

October 22, 2019 • by Michael C. Dawson

The multiple capitalist crises the U.S. faces today are a result both of the inherent contradictions found within a capitalist social order, and from frictions and contradictions arising out of its articulation with two other systems of domination -- those of patriarchy and white supremacy. These crises have generated extreme ...

Uncategorized

Senior Citizens as “Silver Surfers”

& Other Fantasies about Working Longer

October 15, 2019 • by Teresa Ghilarducci

The new “working-longer consensus” is reminiscent of the deeply flawed and now largely-discredited “Washington Consensus” that crystallized around aid to developing countries in the 1980s. Both are based on the demands of neo-liberal policy makers, not the needs of working people. The Economist recently endorsed the findings of the 2019 OECD report “Working ...

Uncategorized

I Ain’t Gonna Work on Merritt’s Farm No More

A brief history of central California’s forgotten empire

October 11, 2019 • by Matthew Ford

In early 1949 as the shift away from wartime production slowed economic growth in the South, my great-grandparents (Glen and Lucille) began looking for new opportunities. Glen’s wartime jobs at a military training field and an ammunition factory in Oakridge Tennessee dried up, and he went back to tenant farming ...

Media

Could Turkey Just Be OK Again?

Media and the drift towards authoritarianism

October 10, 2019 • by Ergin Bulut

Liberals in the U.S. were -- and some still are -- shocked. The election of Trump devastated the liberals’ American dream. Trump’s grotesque political style revealed that the U.S. wasn’t as awe-inspiring as the liberals imagined it to be. And yet, hadn’t they just elected the nation’s first black President? ...

Feature

A Call For A Global Focus On Community Values

A market for values is what the world Needs to reconcile democracy and capitalism, community and the individual

September 24, 2019 • by Marco Senatore

The weakening of democracy and community Liberal democracy is in retreat in several countries: Brazil, India, Hungary, Poland. It is also going through an identity crisis in the United States and United Kingdom. In Italy in the last year there has been a sharp increase in divisiveness on issues such as ...

A Stormy Affair with the Dollar

A long history of devaluations matters for Argentina’s elections

September 20, 2019 • by Santiago Mandirola

On March 31st, 2019, the Argentinean football league crowned a new champion. Among the many posts on social media that commented on the event, one tweet asked: “how much was the dollar [in Argentinean pesos] the last time your team won the league?” and listed the value of the American ...

Capitalism

The Return of “Capitalism”

And the limits of economics

September 20, 2019 • by William Milberg

As Democratic presidential hopefuls find themselves responding to the questions “are you a socialist?” and “are you a capitalist?,” it is useful to remember that for most of the post-War era, the word capitalism was taboo in economics, the discipline whose very role is to provide rigorous analysis of … ...

When Debt Matters

Argentina’s new debt trap and the return of the IMF

September 18, 2019 • by Juan Matías De Lucchi

Because of its long-term effect, one of the most important negative effects of Macri’s failed policy has been the dramatic rise of the relevant public debt, which is debt denominated in foreign currency and held by the private sector and international organisms. This debt has gone from 73 to 172 ...

Feature

Assessing the Macri Legacy

How four years of economic policy matter for the upcoming elections

September 17, 2019 • by Michael A. Cohen

One of the most critical decisions that started this downward spiral was Macri’s rollback of “retenciones” or taxes on agricultural exports, primarily soy, that had been increased during the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2008. This reduction in public revenue of about US$2 billion a year immediately ...

Democracy

Turkey’s Authoritarianism and Crisis Management

It’s Complicated!

August 26, 2019 • by Ali Rıza Güngen

For many observers, it is the authoritarian shift and the irresponsible policies accompanying the regime change of 2017-18 that led to the latest economic crisis in Turkey. They generally tend to deem the 2003-07 period as the golden years of the Turkish economy, despite the fact that Turkey’s credit-led model ...