socialist-economics

http://epi.org/111134 The federal minimum wage has been eroded by decades of inaction Economic Snapshot  • By  David Cooper  • July 25, 2016 T his week marks the seven-year anniversary of the last time the federal minimum wage was raised, from $6.55 to $7.25 on July 24, 2009. Since then, the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage has fallen by 10 percent as inflation has slowly eroded its value. However, this decline in the buying power of the minimum wage over the past seven years is not even half the overall decline in the minimum wage's value since the late 1960s. As the figure below shows, at its high point in 1968, the federal minimum wage was equal to $9.63 in today's dollars 1 . That means that workers at the minimum wage today are paid roughly 25 percent less than their counterparts 48 years ago.

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Reflections on Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction Part I: Introduction In  Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy  (1942), the Austrian economist  Joseph Schumpeter   (1883–1950)  wrote: The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation—if I may use that biological term—that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. (p. 83) Schumpeter devoted a mere six-page chapter to "The Process of Creative Destruction," in which he described capitalism as "the perennial gale of creative destruction." Despite some ups and downs in reputation over the decades, it has become a  centerpiece for modern thinking on how economies evolve.  One of the most paradoxical economic theo...

Imagining President Trump http://www.cagle.com/r-j-matson/2016/07/imagining-president-trump  -- via my feedly newsfeed

Survey research on right-wing extremism in Europe http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2016/07/survey-research-on-right-wing-extremism.html  -- via my feedly newsfeed

Measuring Sustainable Development Goals http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/29/07/2016/measuring-sustainable-development-goals Measuring Sustainable Development Goals Carlo Carraro - 29th July 2016 Carlo Carraro explores current and potential future efforts to measure and evaluate progress towards the SDGs. In September 2015, the UN Assembly unanimously approved its new Sustainable Development Goals. These goals replace the Millennium Development Goals and are supposed to drive policymaking on both the national and local scale towards sustainability. The definition of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 Targets has been followed by a long debate to establish the set of the best fitting Indicators. In March 2016, the United Nations Inter-Agency Expert Group on SDG Indicators (UN IAEG SDGs), at the 47th session of the UN Statistical Commission 'Better Data Better Lives', presented its report (UN IAEG SDGs, 2016) for a final agreement on the indicators selected...

The 'smoking gun' proving North Carolina Republicans tried to disenfranchise black voters https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/ Today, a federal court  struck down North Carolina's voter-ID law , one of the strictest in the nation. In addition to requiring residents to show identification before they can cast a ballot, the law also eliminated same-day voter registration, eliminated seven days of early voting and put an end to out-of-precinct voting. The federal court ruling reinstates these provisions, for now. Supporters of the law, like North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, have  long maintained  that requirements like these were necessary to prevent voter fraud. But  time and time again , scholars and legal experts have found that the type of fraud these laws are meant to combat is largely nonexistent. One of the most comprehensive studies on the subject  found only 31 in...

Path to Electoral College Victory http://ritholtz.com/2016/07/path-electoral-college-victory/ Interesting  WSJ  graphic showing what each side needs to achieve via the Electoral College to win the White House. I was surprised to see the Journal starting off the post-convention period giving Hillary Clinton 310 Electoral College votes amongst Solid, likely and leaning Democrat voters (270 needed to win). To reach that conclusion, they make Ohio and North Carolina a toss up, and move Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin and Florida to leaning Democrat. In this unusual political year, I would be reluctant to start with those assumptions, instead making Ohio and North Carolina lean Republican, and Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin and Florida the toss ups. Enjoy the next 101 days . . .     Source:  WSJ The post  Path to Electoral College Victory  appeared first on  The Big Picture .  -- via my feedly newsfeed

If politicians care about a rigged system, it's time to address wage theft By  Catherine Rampell If these shenanigans can happen right under the noses of U.S. senators, where  else  are they happening? We'll never know until we get more cops on the beat. I'm talking about wage theft. That's the catch-all term for when employers pay their workers less than they legally owe them — by, for example, forcing them to work off the clock, paying below minimum wage or misclassifying them as independent contractors. Wage theft is not a sexy crime. It rarely makes front-page news, even as it harms so many Americans living paycheck to paycheck. We don't know how prevalent it is, only how often it is discovered — which is highly dependent on how much the government invests in enforcement. Last year, Labor Department investigators  found  $247 million in back wages owed to more than 240,000 workers. That's more than $1,000 stolen from each worker, on average, or the equivalen...

Efficiency in terms of what? One farmer with machinery and fuel can produce a lot food. Very efficient in terms food per human worker. Maybe not efficient in terms of food per unit of energy. And if the process depletes the soil there is less food over a period of time.   Per Fagereng   From: John Case Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2016 3:23 PM To: Socialist Economics ; jcase4218.lightanddark@blogger.com ; CCDS-Members Subject: [CCDS Members] J.M. Keynes : The General Theory of Employment,Interest and Money excerpt   Case: Ok socialists: Keynes last sentence asks a question any advocate of MORE socialism in a MIXED capitalist economy, or market socialist one, likely holds an opinion one: Is it possible, contra state authoritarian or command economies,  " by a right analysis of the problem to cure the disease whilst preserving efficiency and freedom..." Yay or NAY?????     ******************** ...

Efficiency and freedom........ They're both associated with industrialism, which is central to both capitalist and  ex eastern bloc socialism. Both systems had high degrees of inefficiency owing to not  being clear on industrialism's interface with the connection between production relations and relations of production amongst the producers. The above isn't an attempt to answer your question. It is considerations of some things to be looked into enroute to that answer. Sent from my iPhone On Jul 28, 2016, at 3:23 PM, John Case < jcase4218@gmail.com > wrote: Case: Ok socialists: Keynes last sentence asks a question any advocate of MORE socialism in a MIXED capitalist economy, or market socialist one, likely holds an opinion one: Is it possible, contra state authoritarian or command economies,  " by a right analysis of the problem to cure the disease whilst preserving efficiency and freedom..." Yay or NAY????? ******************** From:  John Maynard Keynes (1...