Our Triple Jobs Problem (tags)
First, even as unemployment has inched down, the economy has created barely enough jobs to match population growth. Second, this enormous labor-market “slack” has stifled workers’ bargaining power and kept wages low. Third, policies over 30 years have undermined workers
Book Review: "The Victory of Capital" (tags)
A society can only provide for the future by investing today in the production of tomorrow...What may be sensible economically for a private individual or individual business could be harmful for the national economy, particularly when the economy staggers.
SNWA Whistleblower Shows Ratepayers Bilked for Spring Valley Ranches (tags)
The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) has used rate hikes and government subsidies to purchase ranches at six times above market value to appear as landholders for water rights for their proposed pipeline. An employee of the SNWA turned whistleblower has come forward with evidence of bribery of local officials and yearly losses of money on the SNWA ranches. In related news Sen. Mike Roberson introduced SB 232 with bipartisan support to require greater transparency by the SNWA and would require the water authority to obtain approval from the PUC before increasing water rates.
More Controversial Obama Appointments (tags)
Obama
Water Theft from Aquifers Benefit Developers at Expense of Ecosystems (tags)
Water theft from rural aquifers for the short term benefit of Las Vegas developers is a crime against the ecosystems and human communities that depend upon their water for survival. The theft of the aquifer water by SNWA is a sequel of the Owens Valley water grab by LADWP nearly a century ago. Any ELF actvists looking for training sites have over 200 miles of practice targets if this pipeline goes through. Maybe someone should send LADWP a message that water theft can be stopped by preventing transport. When the pipeline is ruptured in numerous places this water theft will become a more costly endeavor! The LADWP and SNWA needs to stop stealing water from aquifers and desert lakes!
Fiscal Cliff Postmortems (tags)
class war
Right to Rent and Social State as Prosperity Motor (tags)
The Scandinavian countries show that more social equality can be combined with more education and economic growth and less unemployment and poverty. Humanity is rich when wealth is shared.
BTL:Romney-Ryan: The GOP's Ticket to Slashing The Nation's Social Safety Net (tags)
Interview with Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, conducted by Scott Harris
Keeping Occupied: Who are these people and what do they want? (tags)
"The One Percent Turn Class War into Generational War" (Dean Baker) http://www.truth-out.org/one-percent-turns-class-war-generational-war/1320680738
The One Percent Turns Class War into Generational War (tags)
The cost of making social security solvent for 75 years amounts to 0.58% of the GDP. The cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars amount to three times as much. The cost of transferring wealth to the top 1% over the past thirty years is 6% of the GDP or 10 times as much as social security cost.
Work Sharing is the Answer (tags)
"Even before the market turmoil took over the news, the economy was largely dead in the water, expanding at a pace too slow to even keep up with the growth rate of the labor force, much less to make up for the 10 million jobs lost due to the downturn."
Videos on Debt and Recession: Michael Hudson, Richard Wolff and Dean Baker (tags)
We face a worldwide downward spiral and the capture and instrumentalization of the state by big capital. We face a repressed 40-year crisis of capital, a neoliberal counter-revolution of reduced corporate taxes, wage stagnation, language distortion and state indebtedness,
We live on credit, shift costs and risks into the future and make possible a prosperity with the help of a policy of cheap money that is paid for by others. An interest-free money system would be a counter model to the growth pressure inherent in the present system.
One Land, Two Economies (tags)
Economic prosperity and progress for the president are obviously synonymous with robustly higher profits for businessmen and stock speculators. The large majority of Americans must suffer more because the crisis is not over for them.
Video: Austerity Budget Means More Unemployment (tags)
Obama is arguing on the Republicans' turf; he has lost control of the debate. Obama has internalized the deficit hawks' frenzy; jobs and unemployment are eclipsed by the sole focus on reducing the deficit. We are arguing about cuts instead of reordering the economy.
Obama Economic Team Passes Out the Kool-Aid (tags)
Mary Bottari is director of the Real Economy Project with the Center for Media and Democracy.
Bogus Washington-Proposed Financial Reform (tags)
banker, not people reform
Alternatives to Capitalism (tags)
Neoliberalism, financial market-driven capitalism, intensifies the crises. However the root of evil lies in the developmental laws of capitalism. Neoliberalism is based on double standards and double speak where CEOs are job creators and workers are cost factors.
Applying the Emergency Brake (tags)
"The US bank model forces others in indebtedness, inflates the money supply, devalues assets and generates virtual dollars..Wall Street banks are involved in a `systemic risk' that endangers the capitalist reproduction process.."
Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery (tags)
Worker exploitation in America and globally
The Neoliberal Agenda is Over and The Despised Social State (tags)
Neoliberalism is the political-economic experiment of individualizing social risks and claiming growth and employment will be higher. This claim is refuted convincingly by the global financial crisis destroying enormous assets and causing growth and employment to crash.
Prerequisites for Overcoming the Financial Crisis (tags)
"In analyzing financial crises, real causes should be differentiated from the side-effects. One of the essential causes for the current crisis is the discrepancy between the linear growth of the real economy and the exponential growth of financial management created by the derivative-economy,"
The Washington establishment suffers a serious defeat (tags)
"Today was Waterloo for Fed secrecy," a victorious Grayson said afterwards. The bill still faces substantial hurdles in becoming law, of course, but yesterday's vote has made that outcome quite possible, and it's worth noting several important points highlighted by what happened here: (1) Our leading media outlets are capable of understanding political debates only by stuffing them into melodramatic, trite and often distracting "right v. left" storylines. While some debates fit comfortably into that framework, many do not. Anger over the Wall Street bailouts, the control by the banking industry of Congress, and the impenetrable secrecy with which the Fed conducts itself resonates across the political spectrum, as the truly bipartisan and trans-ideological vote yesterday reflects. Populist anger over elite-favoring economic policies has long been brewing on both the Right and Left (and in between), but neither political party can capitalize on it because they're both dependent upon and subservient to the same elite interests which benefit from those policies. For that reason, many of the most consequential political conflicts are shaped far more by an "insider v. outsider" dichotomy than by a "GOP v. Democrat" or "Left v. Right" split. The pillaging of America's economic security by financial elites, with the eager assistance of the government officials who they own and who serve them, is the prime example of such a conflict. The political system as a whole — both parties' leadership — is owned and controlled by a handful of key industry interests, and anger over the fact is found across the political spectrum. Yesterday's vote is a very rare example where the true nature of political power was expressed and the petty distractions and artificial fault lines overcome.
"Not learning lessons from the bank collapse reproduces or strengthens the dominance of the financial sector. The danger of a repetition of the crisis grows..The political right-wing slanders the health reform project as an `attack on freedom.'"
NV; New Cave Species at Risk from SNWA Pipeline (tags)
Two new cave species were discovered near Great Basin Natn'l Park's Lehman Caves, part of the same cave aquifer system that SNWA plans to pump billions of gallons away from with their proposed pipeline. The species found were a shrimp called an ostracod and a cave millipede. Both depend on groundwater in caves that would be taken to Whittemore's suburban sprawl developments outside of Vegas city limits.
Obama's Latest No Banker Left Behind Scheme (tags)
the looting of America
Gambling with Extinction; Snails, Dace, Chub & Trout Threatened by SNWA Pipeline to Vegas (tags)
Petition for endangered species status and a lawsuit by conservation groups to protect spring snails could delay or even stop the destructive aquifer draining pipeline to Las Vegas proposed by SNWA.
Economist Dean Baker on Book TV: "Plunder and Blunder" (tags)
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
Sean Baker on Finance Capitalism (tags)
Education and health care are the new gold. Without massive investments in education and health care, dour country will be under-developed and under-achieving.
The Global Economic Crisis - Bad and Worsening (tags)
the crisis is deepening
Snake & Spring Valley Aquifer Water Conservation (NV) (tags)
There are several reasons to avoid the proposed pipeline project diverting water from the Snake and Spring Valley aquifers to the Las Vegas region as planned by Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA). This report will provide background information as to the physical and geological characteristics of the two aquifers mentioned above, including ecological components most likely affected by potential overdraft from the SNWA pipeline.
The government-business looting of America.
Bail-Out, Economic Democracy and the Socialist Path (tags)
David Schweickart, political philosopher, discusses the financial crisis, what it exposes about capitalism, how it can set the stage for economic democracy, and open the socialist path.
Building Bridges Radio: Utah Mine Disaster; Midsummer Markets Meltdown (tags)
WBAI's Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report presents this 28.5 minute radio program. TO LISTEN CLICK ON INTERNET LINK BELOW
Free Books on the Internet (tags)
These two e-books could bring reinvigorate public dialogue in a dry weary land resigned to its contradictions. Tabooed subjects like inequality, infrastructure investment, militarism, distributiona and wasteful consumption are discussed.
Bush's Numbers Racket (Dean Baker) (tags)
Bush's plan would undermine a system that has provided security for tens of millions of workers and their families for seven decades and which can continue to do long into the future if it is just left alone. His private accounts would provide far less security..
L.A.'s Social Security Now- Update (tags)
Stop The Privatization Of Social Security!
'Class War' and the Bush tax cut (tags)
Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy at the libertarian Cato Institute defended Bush's tax cuts, "though the lower income earners pay a high burden in payroll tax for social security and Medicare, they get a higher proportion of their wages in retirement benefits than do the wealthy"
Bush plans $ 600 billion gift to rich (tags)
The battle over how best to boost a sagging economy became a matter of public debate last week with Democrats in the House of Representatives and President Bush introducing competing plans.