socialist-economics

John Case has sent you a link to a blog: Blog: Enlighten Radio Post: Labor Beat Podcast -- WV Legislature with Bob Beach -- DC Labor Film Fest Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/04/this-podcast-of-labor-beat-radio.html -- Powered by Blogger https://www.blogger.com/

John Case has sent you a link to a blog: Blog: Enlighten Radio Podcasts Post: Podcast: Paris on the Potomac: the Climate March, Guv Shutdown, and more Link: http://podcasts.enlightenradio.org/2017/04/podcast-paris-on-potomac-climate-march.html -- Powered by Blogger https://www.blogger.com/

Brexit: the egocentric framing error http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2017/04/brexit-the-egocentric-framing-error.html Chris Grey  decries  the stupidity of Brexiters: So insular has the discussion in the UK been before and since the referendum that one might think that Brexit is simply a matter of the UK formulating its demands. What's going on here is a specific example of a more general error. It's what David Navon has called egocentric  framing  – a tendency to see problems only from our own point of view rather than to put ourselves into others' shoes. We've all been stuck in traffic on a motorway and changed lanes only to see a few minutes later than the lane we left is moving faster. The mistake we make in those cases is to forget that other drivers are trying to solve the same problem as us with the same evidence and so make the same choices – thereby adding to congestion. Investors make the same mistake. One of the best-attested st...

California Single-Payer Healthcare Bill Passes First Committee Test http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-single-payer-healthcare-20170426-story.html Portside Date:  April 28, 2017 Author:  Melanie Mason Date of Source:  Wednesday, April 26, 2017 LA Times A sweeping measure that would establish government-run universal healthcare in California cleared its first legislative hurdle Wednesday as scores of supporters crammed into the Capitol to advocate for a single-payer system. The Senate Health Committee approved the measure on a 5-2 vote after a nearly three-hour hearing, but Democrats and Republicans alike signaled unease with the major question still unanswered in the legislation: how the program would be paid for. The bill, SB 562, would establish a publicly run healthcare plan that would cover everyone living in California, including those without legal immigration status. The proposal would  drastically reduce the role of insurance companies   [1] : The state would pay for al...

Learning from China's Industrial Strategy   RICHARD KOZUL-WRIGHT GENEVA – While the world watches anxiously for signs of US President Donald Trump's next move  vis-à-vis  China, Chinese leaders remain focused on the next stage of their country's ongoing economic transformation. What they do should interest everyone – especially US policymakers. China's industrialization process, like that of other successful East Asian economies, has combined profit-led investment, active industrial policy, and export discipline. But that approach has its limits, exemplified in the numerous developing countries that have attempted to climb the same development ladder, only to become stuck on the middle rungs or even to fall back, owing to what Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik has called " premature deindustrialization ." As part of CM2025, policy and financial support will be provided to spur technological breakthroughs in ten key areas, including next-generation infor...

Trade, Jobs, and Inequality Video http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/04/trade-jobs-and-inequality-video.html Courtesy of Mark Thoma: Trade, Jobs, and Inequality Video  http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/04/trade-jobs-and-inequality-video.html  -- via my feedly newsfeed

Economic Update - Rising Costs of Capitalism's Failures - 04.30.17 http://economicupdate.podbean.com/e/economic-update-rising-costs-of-capitalisms-failures-043017/ Updates on courts blocking Trumps attack on sanctuary cities, selling Whole Foods, Jack Ma and blaming technology for jobs collapse, falling department store jobs since 2000, British queen's enterprise award to UK worker coop, Suma. Major discussions: Trump's corporate tax "reform," crisis as millions of new entrants into global job markets find too few jobs, SSDI crudely targeted by Trump budget director, populism as an elite-vs people formatting of elections.  -- via my feedly newsfeed

No One Can Trust Trump on Immigration https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-28/no-one-can-trust-trump-on-immigration No One Can Trust Trump on Immigration By Francis Wilkinson What doesn't Donald Trump understand about the word "illegal"? That's the gist of some right-wing reaction to the president's comments in an interview with the Associated Press last week. The sticking point is Trump's position on Dreamers, the undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, and who were shielded from deportation by executive actions signed by President Barack Obama. Trump had expressed sympathy toward Dreamers before. But last week he explicitly said he would protect them.   "And that's going to be the policy of your administration," the AP asked Trump, "to allow the Dreamers to stay?" Trump's reply was unequivocal: "Yes. Yes. That's our policy."  Because even the most unequivocal statements from Trump...

Gee, with Exxon's capture of Trump foreign and energy policy, who is surprised? Big Oil Heads for Back-to-Back Profit Triumphs as Fortunes Turn Fresh off Big Oil's best quarter in years,  Exxon Mobil Corp . and  Chevron Corp . may be poised for a repeat. One-third of the way into the second quarter, crude prices -- the prime driver of explorers' profits -- are 25 percent higher than a year ago. If global supplies continue to contract and demand inches up through the end of June, the two dominant U.S. drillers will book a second straight quarterly victory in late July or early August. Already, analysts are forecasting profit blowouts even larger than those registered when Exxon and Chevron disclosed first-quarter results on Friday. Exxon is seen lifting per-share earnings by 132 percent while Chevron is expected to post its biggest second-quarter profit in three years. "It's cutting costs, it's getting more for every dollar you spend, it's getting more from ...

My sentiment exactly. https://lissalucas.com/2017/04/25/open-letter-screw-you-frank-rich/

President Trump's Dramatic Retreat on Trade http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/president-trump-s-dramatic-retreat-on-trade President Trump's Dramatic Retreat on Trade Dean Baker and Jeff Hauser The Hill, April 25, 2017 See article on original site Trade was a major theme in President Trump's campaign. He repeatedly complained that our trade negotiators were stupid and therefore had negotiated bad trade agreements. These bad trade deals are the cause of our trade deficits, which have cost us millions of manufacturing jobs over the last two decades. Trump made very specific promises to turn things around once he was in the White House. In " Donald Trump 's Contract with the American Voter," his "100-day action plan to Make America Great Again" included two very clear trade-related promises:  "I will direct the Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator" and "I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA ...

Policy Watch: President Trump has had help implementing his anti-worker agenda http://www.epi.org/blog/policy-watch-president-trump-has-had-help-implementing-his-anti-worker-agenda/ Tomorrow marks the 100th day of Donald Trump's presidency.  EPI released a report examining President Trump's actions in his first 100 days in office and their impact on U.S. workers and our economy . The report reveals that Trump's top priorities include rolling back worker protections, advancing a budget proposal that would dramatically cut funding for the agencies that safeguard worker's rights, and nominating individuals to key posts—even to the Supreme Court—who threaten workers' wages, safety, and bargaining power. But, it is important to remember that President Trump did not accomplish this alone—Congress has been instrumental in advancing this agenda. Congressional Republicans passed each of the resolutions Trump signed blocking much-needed worker protections . Majority Leader Mi...

Tony asks the right questions, although I suggest discarding the term "neo-liberalism". It's meaningless politically -- no ordinary person knows what it means. It's almost meaningless economically since every economist defines it differently. Use Austerity instead -- its the part of "neo liveralism" that workers see. Sen. McCaskill demonstrates the limits of neo-liberal centrism Tony Pecinovsky Recently at a town hall forum in Fulton, Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill demonstrated the limitations of neo-liberal political centrism. When asked about the prospect of free college tuition, something Sen. Bernie Sanders and others have argued for, McCaskill quipped, "We can't just start having the government pay for everything." At the heart of McCaskill's comment are a number of interconnected and overlapping issues related to the role of government in a democratic society, as well as the class content of policy decisions often designed ...

Larry Summers: Trump is undermining his own treasury secretary President Trump's tax proposals were rolled out yesterday by Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and NEC Director Cohn. For reasons of long run budget health, fairness and economic impact, I think they are extraordinarily ill-advised. I am certain that the substantive concerns I have will be extensively addressed in the debates to come. As I read about the proposals and thought back over the tax discussions of the last year, I found myself feeling sympathetic to Mnuchin. Some of the most difficult moments for any Cabinet officer comes when the president fails to respect his department's desire to do serious policy work, when political circumstance forces the repudiation of his major past statements, and when he has to out of loyalty support absurd propositions. All three of these things happened to Secretary Mnuchin this week. By all accounts the Treasury was on a path working with other agencies to come forth by June with a...

Links for 04-27-17 http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/04/links-for-04-27-17.html A John Bates Clark Prize for Economic History! - A Fine Theorem Unambiguous Evidence That Concentration Is on the Rise - ProMarket To accommodate or not: The Fed's new normal - Eggertsson, Mehrotra, Robbins How Accurate are Projections of Energy Intensity? - Stochastic Trend The Global Systemically Important Banks: An Update - Tim Taylor "I am the king of debt. I do love debt. I love debt." - Econbrowser Using Fiscal Policy for Trade Rebalancing ise Hard - Brad Setser Minimum-Wage Warriors See Certainty in Ambiguity - Bloomberg View The student loan crisis is fueled by a weak labor market - Equitable Growth A progressive VAT - John Cochrane Exchange rate prediction redux - VoxEU  -- via my feedly newsfeed

Minimum Wages and the Distribution of Family Incomes in the United States http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/04/minimum-wages-and-the-distribution-of-family-incomes-in-the-united-states.html Arindrajit Dube at Equitable Growth:  Minimum wages and the distribution of family incomes in the United States :  Introduction  The ability of minimum-wage policies in the United States to aid lower-income families depends on how they affect wage gains, potential job losses, and other sources of family income, including public assistance. In contrast to a large body of research on the effects of minimum wages on employment, 1  there are relatively fewer studies that empirically estimate the impact of minimum wage policies on family incomes.  In my new paper, I use individual-level data between 1984 and 2013 from the Current Population Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau to provide a thorough assessment of how U.S. minimum wage policies have affected the distribution of family incom...

Congress should oppose Acosta's confirmation and demand a pro-worker secretary of labor http://www.epi.org/blog/congress-should-oppose-acostas-confirmation-and-demand-a-pro-worker-secretary-of-labor/ Alexander Acosta will not be the secretary of labor that working people need, and for that reason, senators should oppose his confirmation. As Senator Elizabeth Warren said, the test is not whether Acosta is better than Andrew Puzder, a truly abysmal, insulting choice to lead the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The test must be whether he will be a strong advocate for working Americans, someone who will use the power of his department to improve their lives. The evidence from Acosta's confirmation hearings and his past service in the government shows that he will not. The best we might hope for is that he will not politicize the agency and will be a caretaker until an administration that believes in the Labor Department's mission is elected. That is not enough. It isn't eve...

John Case has sent you a link to a blog: Blog: Enlighten Radio Post: Climate March, Guv Shutdown, Labor Film Fest Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/04/climate-march-guv-shutdown-labor-film.html -- Powered by Blogger https://www.blogger.com/

Labor, Socialists and Immigration https://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/labor-socialists-and-immigration/ Dr. Duane E. Campbell, April 19, 2017 In spite of the economic boon for the wealthy, working people in the U.S. have yet to receive a significant improvement in their standard of living for over 30 years. At the same time, democratic forces are once again confronted with anti immigrant campaigns- this time fostered and promoted by a President of the U.S. As socialists, we stand with and among the US working class in opposition to the rule of the transnational corporations and their exploitation of the economy and their despoliation of our lives, our society and our environment. We are currently experiencing a major restructuring of the global economy directed by the transnational corporations to produce profits for their corporate owners. The impoverishment of the vast majority of people in pursuit of profits for a small minority has pushed millions to migrant in search of ...