socialist-economics

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My Role With the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee http://commondreams.org/views/2016/06/04/my-role-democratic-platform-drafting-committee Portside Date:  June 29, 2016 Author:  James Zogby Date of Source:  Saturday, June 4, 2016 Common Dreams I wasn't going to write about this subject, but something happened yesterday over lunch that prompted me to reconsider. I was having a peaceful meal with my wife when two men sat down in the next booth. In loud voices they began to discuss the state of the presidential contest. At one point, the gentleman directly behind me said, "and Sanders picked that Cornel West and that guy who's the head of the Arab League who has it in for Israel...". That did it. I spun around and said, in a polite but firm voice, "I'm that guy. I'm not the head of the Arab League and I'm asking you to change the subject now." Shocked, the man responded "you're him!" and began asking me questions. I cut him off ma...

What We Talk About When We Talk About Socialism http://www.peoplesworld.org/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-socialism/ Portside Date:  June 29, 2016 Author:  Geoffrey Jacques Date of Source:  Wednesday, June 29, 2016 People's World A satisfactory answer to the question "What is Socialism?" is harder to find than might seem the case at first glance. One reason for this is that the movement has always toggled between the burden of Utopia and the urgency of the fight for justice. This has been true since its earliest days, when Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrenched the "socialist" label from the ancient network of counterculture communities and coops they called "Utopian" and then pinned the adjective "scientific" to their own project.   Other than the phrases "to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy" that we find in the  Communist Manifesto , we have very little from Marx and hi...

2016 Election Forecast

This kind of talk by any of 'us' is surprising!!! – goes on often "... the only instance (97-98) in 40 years where there was a significant bump in median family income (and wages or salaries)." Too many people got left out as usual.  Prices rose as wages rose.  Norma     From: Members [mailto:members-bounces+normaha=pacbell.net@lists.cc-ds.org] On Behalf Of John Case Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2016 5:48 AM To: Socialist Economics <socialist-economics@googlegroups.com>; CCDS-Members <members@lists.cc-ds.org>; jcase4218.lightanddark@blogger.com Subject: [CCDS Members] Clinton's Tech Policy Targets Young Entrepreneurs   I will not be surprised if this is the true and principle Clinton structural economic strategy to address inequality: turn more places into Silicon Valleys. It's the strategy, or opportunity, that Bill Clinton exploited in the mid nineties that propelled the tech boom, and the only instance (97-98) in 40 years where there was a sig...

What Hillary Clinton should learn from Brexit Jesse Jackson http://peoplesworld.org/what-hillary-clinton-should-learn-from-brexit/ Brexit  - the stunning British vote to leave the European Union - is a clear and dramatic rebuke of the country's political and economic elites. A majority voted to leave even though the heads of the United Kingdom's two major parties, more than a thousand corporate and bank CEOs, legions of economists, the leaders of Europe and the United States, and the heads of the international financial organizations all warned of dire consequences if they did not vote to remain. For Americans, one question is whether this result has implications for the 2016 presidential campaign. Political sea changes tend to cross national boundaries. Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 tracked the rise of Margaret Thatcher to power in Great Britain. Bill Clinton's New Democrats were mirrored by Tony Blair's New Labour Party. So does Brexit presage the rise of Donal...

I will not be surprised if this is the true and principle Clinton structural economic strategy to address inequality: turn more places into Silicon Valleys. It's the strategy, or opportunity, that Bill Clinton exploited in the mid nineties that propelled the tech boom, and the only instance (97-98) in 40 years where there was a significant bump in median family income (and wages or salaries). I certainly agree that such a strategy can be an important component. But I think its the WRONG focus to put at the TOP of the to-do list. MInimum wage, major infrastructure spending, collective bargaining expansion, big payoffs in the form of cash, new jobs and/or training for displaced workers from globalization and climate change adjustment impacts --- all these things are on top of revisiting the 90s tech boom on MY to-do LIST. Clinton's Tech Policy Targets Young Entrepreneurs By  STEVE LOHR JUNE 28, 2016 H illary Clinton 's technology policy initiative, released on Tuesday, is a l...

Rising Income Polarization in the United States Posted on  June 28, 2016  by iMFdirect By  Ali Alichi The latest IMF  review of the U.S. economy  underscores the country's resilience in the face of financial market volatility, a strong dollar, and subdued global demand. But the review also cites longer-term challenges to growth, including rising income polarization. Ever since the 1970s, the number of U.S. middle-income households, as percent of total, has been shrinking. The result has been increasing income polarization. For the three initial decades since then this polarization was more about households moving into the upper income ranks. However, since 2000, more middle-income households have fallen into lower, rather than higher income brackets. Combined with real income stagnation, polarization has had a negative impact on the economy, hampering the main engine of the U.S. growth: consumption. The analysis in our new  paper  suggests that over 1998–2013, the U.S. economy has ...

Inequality Has Grown in All 50 States http://www.cbpp.org/blog/inequality-has-grown-in-all-50-states The gaps between the richest and poorest families have grown in every state since the late 1970s, a new  report  from the Economic Policy Institute shows. The top 1 percent's share of income is close to its 1928 peak (see chart).     The report's alarming findings include: In 2013, the average income of the top 1 percent of families nationally was $1.2 million — more than 25 times the average income of the bottom 99 percent. The lion's share of income growth since the late 1970s has gone to the richest households. The top 1 percent's share of income rose in every state and the District of Columbia — and it doubled nationally, from 10 percent to 20 percent — between 1979 and 2013. Since 2007, due to the Great Recession, family income at all levels has fallen and income gaps narrowed somewhat.  On the other hand, the richest families have benefitted most from the economic ...

Economic implications of Brexit http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/ben-bernanke/posts/2016/06/28-brexit After several days of market upset, a few reflections on last week's momentous vote in Great Britain. Even more obvious now than before the vote is that the biggest losers, economically speaking, will be the British themselves. The vote ushers in what will be several years of tremendous uncertainty—about the rules that will govern the U.K.'s trade with its continental neighbors, about the fates of foreign workers in Britain and British workers abroad, and about the country's political direction, including perhaps where its borders will ultimately lie. Such fundamental uncertainty will depress business formation, capital investment, and hiring; indeed, it had begun to do so even before the vote. The U.K. economic slowdown to come will be exacerbated by falling asset values (houses, commercial real estate, stocks) and damaged confidence on the part of households and businesses....

Here's a story from The New York Times I thought you'd find interesting: The rejection of globalization that powered the Brexit movement could happen in the United States. And it may help Donald J. Trump. Read More: http://nyti.ms/29cQUeS Get The New York Times on your mobile device

---- Brexit: The end of globalization as we know it? // Economic Policy Institute Blog The British vote to leave the European Union is a watershed event—one that marks the end of an era of globalization driven by deregulation and the ceding of power over trade and regulation to international institutions like the EU and the World Trade Organization. While there were many contributing factors, the 52 percent vote in favor of Brexit no doubt in part reflects the fact that globalization has failed to deliver a growing standard of living to most working people over the past thirty years. Outsourcing and growing trade with low-wage countries—including recent additions to the EU such as Poland, Lithuania, and Croatia, as well as China, India and other countries with large low-wage labor forces—have put downward pressure on wages of the working class. As Matt O'Brien notes , the result has been that the "working classes of rich countries—like Brexit voters—have seen little in...

State capacity and American technology: Evidence from the 19th century Daron Acemoglu, Jacob Moscona, James A Robinson   27 June 2016 The 'great inventions' view of productivity growth ascribes the excellent growth from 1920 to 1970 in the US to a handful of advances, and suggests that today poor productivity performance is driven by a lack of breakthrough discoveries. This column argues instead that the development of an effective governmental infrastructure in the 19th century accounted for a major part of US technological progress and prominence in this period. Infrastructure design thus appears to have the power to reinvigorate technological progress. 15 A A Related American growth and inequality since 1700 Peter H. Lindert, Jeffrey G. Williamson The global diffusion of ideas Francisco Buera, Ezra Oberfield Is US economic growth over? Robert J. Gordon Information technology and economic change: The impact of the printing press Jeremiah Dittmar Robert Gordon's new book, ...