socialist-economics

The curse of corruption can kill any campaign, or government. And the best you can do is minimize it. Scarcity and inequalities will infect pay-to-play with blandishments. But how many? Polls say corruption in public is one or two issue for many. IMF has good data on this globally. Chart of the WeekCorruption and Your Money https://blogs.imf.org/2019/05/28/corruption-and-your-money/ By  IMFBlog The costs of corruption run deep. Your taxpayer dollars are lost in different ways, siphoned off from schools, roads, and hospitals to line the pockets of people up to no good. Equally damaging is the way it corrodes the government's ability to help grow the economy in a way that benefits all citizens. And no country is immune to corruption. Our Chart of the Week from the  Fiscal Monitor  analyzes more than 180 countries and finds that more corrupt countries collect fewer taxes, as people pay bribes to avoid them, including through tax loopholes designed in exchange for kickbacks. Also, when...

Links (5/28/19) https://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2019/05/links-52819.html Trump Tantrums the Dems Out of a Trap - Paul Krugman  I gotta say, it was very clever of Nancy Pelosi to steal Donald Trump's strawberries, pushing him over the edge into self-evident lunacy. As everyone knows, Trump stormed out of a meeting on infrastructure, apparently out of uncontrollable rage over Pelosi's remarks pointing out that the administration's stonewalling on all fronts, including raw defiance of the law requiring that it provide the president's tax returns, obviously amount to a coverup of something (and maybe multiple things.) And Democrats should be grateful. ... Advertising as a major source of human dissatisfaction - VoxEU  Although the negative impact of conspicuous consumption has been discussed for more than a century, the link between advertising and individual is not well understood. This column uses longitudinal data for 27 countries in Europe linking chan...

The family-like dimensions of much public (and service) work contributes an important source of relationship, and thus power, not present in earlier manufacturing and mining modes of labor. Few observe the labor embedded in the hammer they buy. But how can one ignore that of the nurse? ' Schools are no longer just institutions of learning—we are the primary hub of care outside the family' https://www.epi.org/blog/schools-are-no-longer-just-institutions-of-learning-we-are-the-primary-hub-of-care-outside-the-family/ My colleague Elaine Weiss launched her new book  Broader, Bolder, Better  on the challenges facing teachers around the country at  an EPI event this week  by emphasizing the need for policymakers and researchers to listen to educators themselves rather than imposing their biases on the pros. Truly moving remarks from guest of honor Joy Kirk, a middle-school teacher from Fredrick County, Va., made quite clear why that's a sound strategy. Kirk described the transiti...

The 737 MAX disaster as an organizational failure http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-737-max-disaster-as-organizational.html The topic of the organizational causes of technology failure comes up frequently in  Understanding Society . The tragic crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in the past year present an important case to study. Is this an instance of pilot error (as has occasionally been suggested)? Is it a case of engineering and design failures? Or are there important corporate and regulatory failures that created the environment in which the accidents occurred, as the public record seems to suggest? The formal accident investigations are not yet complete, and the FAA and other air safety agencies around the world have not yet approved the aircraft for flight following the suspension of certification following the second crash. There will certainly be a detailed and expert case study of this case at some point in the future, and I will be eager to read the re...

Abortion Is a Class Issue https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/abortion-is-a-class-issue/ The wave of anti-abortion laws sweeping through the United States this spring raises anew the connections between reproductive choice and class. Class inequality makes reproductive choice a province of the privileged rather than a power shared by all people. Five states have passed bans on abortions after six or eight weeks when a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Alabama's law, passed on May 17, is the most restrictive in the nation, as it makes performing an abortion at every stage a felony offense, with no exceptions for rape or incest. It is tempting to focus only on these deeply alarming legislative developments, because they directly set the stage to overturn Roe v. Wade. But denying access to an abortion has already and will likely be achieved in a less dramatic fashion.  Restrictions  that progressively and decisively chip away at access and fairness are also very effect...

I submit the questions of corporate reorganization of (especially) the "too big to fail" enterprises to reflect the public and employee stakeholders interests is the MOST critical economic challenge. Absent a shift in corporate charters, direction and missions, the challenges of universal health care and energy management in the face of climate change and growth and globalization will be stuck in quicksand and rubber bands.  Elizabeth Warren has weighed in heavily on this question as well. These ideas will be come the essence of the economic meaning of "democratic socialism", or, if you prefer, "progressive capitalism", or 'progressive social-democracy".  These details will mark the DEGREE of socialization vs cooperation with capital "works" -- to use Jaime Dimon's recent expression. Bernie Sanders backs 2 policies to dramatically shift corporate power to U.S. workers https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/05/28/bernie-sanders...

Robert Heilbroner's classic essay in economics and ideology.  Robert Heilbroner (1996): The Embarrassment of Economics: Weekend Reading https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/05/a-depression-is-for-capitalism-like-a-good-cold-douche.html Robert Heilbroner  (1996):  The Embarrassment of Economics  ( Challenge , 39:6, 46-49, DOI: 10.1080/05775132.1996.11471942)  https://doi.org/10.1080/05775132.1996.11471942 : Is economics free of ideology? No, says this eminent economist and historian of economic thought. And it would be best if economists acknowledged it. I am approaching an age that can be called venerable, a process over which I have no control but which allows me certain privileges, among them saying outrageous things. This, I must warn you, is an outrageous speech, all the more so because it is delivered in dead earnest, despite a certain flippancy that may intrude from time to time. The subject is the degeneration—I am tempted to say "degeneracy"—of economics, a social...

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Trump's 'Easy' Trade War Hits Snags as China Plays the Long Game https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-25/trump-s-easy-trade-war-hits-snags-as-china-plays-the-long-game In June 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump stood between bales of crushed aluminum and a crowd of supporters in a factory outside of Pittsburgh and made a promise on trade that wasn't hard to keep. "If China does not stop its illegal activities, including its theft of American trade secrets, I will use every lawful -- this is very easy. This is so easy. I love saying this," he told workers at the recycling firm Alumisource, a former steel plant in Monessen, Pennsylvania. "I will use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes." Three years later, he has clearly delivered on the pledge. Trump's tariff-driven attack against the world's No. 2 economy has shown that expanding trade powers has indeed been the easy part. But as events this week show, wi...