Randy Wray: When Will They Ever Learn – Uncle Sam is not Robin Hood
Why Obama’s budget is yet another economic policy failure.
Read more...Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class
Matt Stoller: The Hippie Peaceniks Behind Corporate Global Trade Agreements
Yves here. Among other things, this post shows what passes for analysis among elite technocrats.
Read more...Gaius Publius: Are Democrats who Propose Cuts to Social Security “Stupid” or Just Doing Risk-Analysis?
Are austerity-promoting Democrats stupid or evil?
Read more...Jeff Madrick: Why the CBO Can’t Be Trusted
Yves here. I’ve written from time to time how openly partisan the Congressional Budget Office is, not in the traditional sense of favoring one party over the other, but as serving as an key enforcer of neoliberal ideology. For instance, its projections of government debt to GDP ratios were highly misleading by virtue of failing to net out financial assets. And after being called out for that error in paper, what did the CBO do? Make it even harder to find the data to prove the magnitude of their misdirection.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Can the Internet Democratize Capitalism?
Yves here. Trust me, you must read this post. In its entirety. Varoufakis discusses the operation of “liberal democracy” as opposed to “classical democracy,”. and argues that voter apathy is a feature, not a bug. But the real meat is in his discussion of how the economic rights of laborers has changed over time and how that has had profound implications for democracy.
Read more...Will a $10 Minimum Wage Get All Working Americans Out of Poverty?
Yves here. This Real News Network segment discusses what many readers know all too well, that even a $10 minimum wage fails to provide an adequate standard of living, particularly for parents.
Read more...Wolf Richter: The Young Subprime Debt-Slave Generation
Yves here. It’s obvious that student debt is a train wreck. Yet the severity of this problem is barely acknowledged as a problem among policy classes. Is that because the looting must continue? But even if so, why do colleges and universities have such privileged status?
Read more...Ireland, Europe, and the U.S. and the Financial Crooks: Interview with Michael Hudson
Michael Hudson discusses austerity in Ireland, how US economic policy has affected Ireland, Europe and the rest of the world as well as how the various political parties in Ireland have mishandled the economic crisis.
Read more...Gaius Publius: Rising Inequality – Recovery Occurring Almost Exclusively Among the Wealthy
America’s income inequality has grown so wide that the current “recovery” is driven primarily by the upper fifth of income earners, as revealed by the latest consumer spending data.
Read more...PBS Pimps Itself Out to Billionaire Who Campaigns Against Pensions for Gov’t Employees to Produce Scaremongering Series About Government Pensions
Now we know how much it takes to buy PBS programming: $3.5 million.
Read more...Versailles Watch: John Mack Whines About How Badly Wall Street CEOs are Treated
You cannot make this stuff up.
Read more...Money and Elections in Washington: Pro Wrestling, but With More Respectable Clothes
kayfabe: Term in pro wrestling. Kayfabe was the unsaid rule that the wrestlers should stay in character during the show and in public appearances in order to maintain a feeling of reality (albeit suspended) among the fans.
Read more...How Obamacare Raids the Assets of Low-Income Older Americans
One feature of Obamacare that Lambert has mentioned in passing in his posts is that individuals over 55 who are enrolled in Medicaid are subject to having expenses like being in a long-term care facility, home services, and related drugs and prescriptions clawed back from their estates. A must read post at Paul Craig Roberts details how pernicious and sneaky these provisions are.
Read more...The Economics of the 1%: Neoliberal Lies About Government
Yves here. This is a short, straightforward Real News Network interview with John Weeks, Professor Emeritus of the University of London, which dissects the logic, such as it is, by which neoliberals argue against taxes and for smaller government.
Read more...Over 1 in 6 Men in Prime Working Years Don’t Have a Job
A new Wall Street Journal story on how many men aged 25 to 54 can’t find work, fails to mention but nevertheless shellacks an embarrassing New York Fed paper released earlier this week.
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