In this segment, Thomas Cahill, author of the Hinges of History series and former director of religious publishing for Doubleday, discusses how Pope Francis is upsetting both conservatives in the Catholic Church and the public generally through his stress on traditional Christian values.
Read more...The problem of who should bear the costs of climate-change-induced rises in flood frequency in coastal communities is difficult even before throwing in the not-trivial problem that is it also highly politicized.
Read more...Yves here. While I suspect the general thesis of this post will appeal to many readers, I’m bothered by the use of “price” and “purchase” to describe the idea that progress is not linear and in many respects may add up to less in terms of satisfaction than we’d like to believe.
Read more...Yves here. This essay achieves the difficult task of working through some of the implications of Arrow’s impossibility theorem, which might alternatively be called “the inescapability of politics theorem” in an accessible manner. In fact, one of the conclusions that the author Raphaële Chappe focuses on is that how well a society “does politics” matters, that the structure and health of institutions matter. Thus it’s perverse that economics, which readers of this blog understand full well is really political economy, has virtually no interest in questions of governance (the closest it comes is in principal/agent and game theory and information asymmetry).
Read more...A Christmas Carol is often mistakenly charged with creating our contemporary, festive, largely secular Christmas. And while that may have been one of Dickens’ motives, a bigger one is more obvious: that of better treatment of children and the working poor.
Read more...The Supreme Court delivers an ugly holiday surprise.
Read more...I highly recommend this short interview by John Authers of the Financial Times with Amar Bhidé, a professor at Tufts, in which he argues that a proper reading of Friedrich Hayek would lead to considerable skepticism about whether most of the changes in finance over the last three decades actually represent progress.
Read more...Reader dSquib flagged a “bizarre” article by Mike Konczal in the New Republic titled, “Corporatism” is the Latest Hysterical Right-Wing Accusation: The secret history of a smear.” dSquib seemed quite perplexed that anyone would deem calling Obama a corporatist, which as we’ll demonstrate is patently true, a smear.
Read more...Why Obamacare illustrates a big hidden cost of neoliberalism: that you are required to shop, and shopping is work.
Read more...As in so many Western countries these days, the social, political and economic landscapes in Spain are shifting at a startling rate. In the last two weeks alone the Rajoy government has announced one draft law and passed another that threaten to radically redraw the country’s system of law and order.
Read more...I’ve been fascinated lately with the meaning of the terms “liberal” and “progressive.” It’s clear that what we now call “liberalism” is really a variant, a side branch of the real thing, and should be more properly named “FDR liberalism” or “social liberalism.”
Read more...Get a cup of coffee while you settle down to watch this video of Nancy Fraser discussing the crisis as a joint problem of ecological, financial, and social systems.
Read more...It may seem a bit de trop to take on a Paul Krugman blog post yet again, but the reason for focusing on his post yesterday on the TransPacific Partnership is less for its substance and more as a political zeitgeist indicator.
Read more...Moyers describes how the social contract in America is being dismantled in order to further enrich what he calls a “mercenary class”.
Read more...To the extent that middle class and more affluent people think about poverty in America, they likely have blurry, partial images due to distance and lack of direct experience. Their remedies might include better education and training, higher minimum wages, more affordable housing.
New Scientist thinks otherwise. Its headline for a blistering editorial: Want to fix US inequality? Begin with worming tablets.
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