Category Archives: Social policy

The Great Capitalist Heist: How Paris Hilton’s Dogs Ended Up Better Off Than You

By Gerald Friedman, who teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author, most recently, of “Reigniting the Labor Movement” (Routledge, 2007). Edited by Lynn Parramore and produced in partnership with author Douglas Smith and Econ4. Cross posted from Alternet.

Summer 2009. Unemployment is soaring. Across America, millions of terrified people are facing foreclosure and getting kicked to the curb. Meanwhile in sunny California, the hotel-heiress Paris Hilton is investing $350,000 of her $100 million fortune in a two-story house for her dogs. A Pepto Bismol-colored replica of Paris’ own Beverly Hills home, the backyard doghouse provides her precious pooches with two floors of luxury living, complete with abundant closet space and central air.

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Massive Furor in UK Over Libor Manipulation; Where’s the Outrage Here?

In case it isn’t yet apparent to you, the unfolding scandal over manipulation of Libor and its Euro counterpart Euribor is a huge deal. Even though at this point, only Barclays, the UK bank that was first to settle, is in the hot lights, at least 16 other major financial players, which means pretty much everybody, is implicated.

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Why Don’t Americans Take More Vacations? Blame It on Independence Day

An article in the Boston Review by professor of sociology Claude Fischer falls prey to a pattern that is all too common: attributing social/political outcomes to American attitudes without bothering to examine why those attitudes came to be.

Let me give you a bit of useful background before I turn to the Fischer article as an illustration of a lack of curiosity, or worse, among soi disant intellectuals in America, and how it keeps Americans ignorant as to how many of our supposed cultural values have been cultivated to inhibit disruptive thought and action.

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Mark Ames: The Left’s Big Sellout – How the ACLU and Human Rights Groups Quietly Exterminated Labor Rights

By Mark Ames, the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine. Cross posted from The Daily Banter.

Progressive intellectuals have been acting very bipolar towards labor lately, characterized by wild mood swings ranging from the “We’re sorry we abandoned labor, how could we!” sentiment during last year’s Wisconsin uprising against Koch waterboy Scott Walker, to the recent “labor is dead/it’s all labor’s fault” snarling after the recall vote against Gov. Walker failed.

The intellectual-left’s wild mood swings between unrequited love towards labor unions, and unrequited contempt, got me wondering how this abandonment of labor has manifested itself.

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“Great Latvian Success Story!”

You too can be an IMF success story if you grind your population into penury by wearing the austerian hairshirt. And this little video (hat tip Nathan) has to skip over capture some of the extreme measures operating in Latvia, such as bankers taking souls as collateral for loans.

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Finance and the Mafia State

By Sell on News, a global macro equities analyst. Cross-posted from Macrobusiness.

The argument advanced by the historian Philip Bobbitt that a transition is occurring in world politics from the nation state to the market state has long appealed as a snapshot of what is occurring in world politics. It is, as with any thesis about a large subject, far too simple to reflect accurately all that is happening, but it is nevertheless a fine starting point. As we witness the political travails plaguing southern Europe, it gives us a useful analytic to trace the outline of what is happening.

That, at least, is what I used to think. I am starting to wonder if something very different is happening.

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Whatever Happened to Natchez? How to End the Nightmare of Jobless America

Yves here. It is frustrating to watch the refusal of the officialdom to deal with a persistent, high level of unemployment. Ronald Reagan was more concerned and more aggressive when unemployment breached 8%. By contrast, pundits provide excuses for the Administration’s passivity by blaming joblessness on structural unemployment, when various studies have debunked that (one simple proof: if unemployment were structural, you’d expect to see tight job markets in some sectors/job types and slack in others, but when you cut the data, you find high unemployment across the board).

This article helps to puncture some of the misperceptions about unemployment in America and provides some practical ideas.

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Steve Levitt: Like a True Chicago Boy, Likes People to Go to Jail so Markets Can Be Free

Yves here. Readers reacted positively to the inaugural report of the S.H.A.M.E Project on Malcolm Gladwell. S.H.A.M.E. , stands for “Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics.” Its approach is to provide information about the background and funding sources of well-recognized journalists and pundits so that the public will be in a better position to recognize bias and hidden agendas in their reporting and analysis.

This second report is on the widely-read economist Steve Levitt

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Yanis Varoufakis: Solidarity Euro-Style – Finnish Loans, ECB Bond Purchases, EFSF Tough Love and Assorted Horror Stories from the Postmodern Euro-Workhouse

The world seems convinced that Europe, perhaps under duress, put together a large Solidarity Fund (the EFSF) for the purposes of helping the fiscally-stricken Eurozone member-states avoid bankruptcy once they were frozen out of the money markets. The criticisms waged at this type of ‘solidarity’ centred on two issues: First, that the Fund’s size was not large enough (and thus unable to help Italy and Spain). Secondly, that this Fund resembles more a Victorian Workhouse whose real purpose was not to show solidarity to its residents but, rather, to make their life so unpleasant as to deter able-bodied workers from ever seeking its assistance.

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Fitch Threatens Downgrade Waves Wet Noodle at US

Here we go again….

As the Obama administration is quietly working towards a “Grade Bargain”, which is the current branding for “let’s put the middle class on the austerity rack just when the economy looks depression prone”, rating agency Fitch does its part by lobbing in a “the US needs to get its fiscal house in order” message.

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Malcolm Gladwell Unmasked: A Look Into the Life & Work of America’s Most Successful Propagandist

Yves here. Yasha Levine and Mark Ames have launched the S.H.A.M.E. Project, which stands for “Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics.” Its approach is to provide information about the background and funding sources of well-recognized journalists and pundits so that the public will be in a better position to recognize bias and hidden agendas in their reporting and analysis. You can find a S.H.A.M.E dossier on Gladwell here.

By Yasha Levine, President of S.H.A.M.E., an investigative journalist and a founding editor of The eXiled. His work has been published by Wired, The Nation, Slate, The New York Observer and many others. He has made several guest appearances on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Show.

“I’m necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I’m still a parasite.”
– Malcolm Gladwell

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Wisconsin Recap: Thanks to Obama, American Left Lies in Smoldering Wreckage

By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller.

On Tuesday, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker humiliated his Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, by easily turning back a popular recall attempt sponsored by unions and liberal activists.  The numbers in the election, which were supposed to be close, were ugly, in favor of the Republican.  But this wasn’t just any Republican, Scott Walker is THE Republican, the politician who made his governorship a referendum on a hard right agenda, in a blue state.

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