socialist-economics

By Paul Krugman Opinion Columnist The coronavirus led to a plunge in output and employment. This plunge, however, was a feature, not a bug. As I've been saying for a while, we deliberately put the economy into the equivalent of a medically induced coma, suppressing activity to give ourselves a chance to get the pandemic under control. If we had stayed the course, this period of pain could have set the stage for a rapid recovery. But it was obvious early on that mishandling the situation — failing to stay the course on social distancing, failing to use the time to develop enough testing and contact tracing to gradually resume normal life while keeping a lid on new outbreaks — could extend the pain, turning a short, sharp recession into a prolonged depression, a long period of very high unemployment. Here's how I described the nightmare scenario more than six weeks ago: "Over the next few weeks, many red states abandon social-distancing policies, while many individuals, taki...

Noah Smith: (Blooomberg) Coronavirus Brings American Decline Out in the Open https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-29/coronavirus-brings-american-decline-out-in-the-open The U.S.'s decline started with little things that people got used to. Americans drove past empty construction sites and didn't even think about why the workers weren't working, then wondered why roads and buildings  took so long  to finish. They got used to avoiding hospitals because of the unpredictable and  enormous bills  they'd receive. They paid 6% real-estate commissions, never realizing that Australians  were paying  2%. They grumbled about high taxes and high health-insurance premiums and potholed roads, but rarely imagined what it would be like to live in a system that worked better. When writers speak of American decline, they're usually talking about international power -- the rise of China and the waning of U.S. hegemony and moral authority. To most Americans, those are dis...

U.S. workers need more power http://larrysummers.com/2020/06/29/u-s-workers-need-more-power/ By Lawrence H. Summers and Anna Stansbury Covid-19 has brought into sharp relief the contrast between the experiences of the higher-income Americans who receive deliveries and the lower-income Americans who fulfill them, between those who can work safely from home and those who must expose themselves to risk, often with inadequate protection, between those who have the power to safeguard their health and their living standards and those who do not. More broadly, it has highlighted the long-standing trends in the U.S. economy toward a falling labor share of income, rising income inequality and slow wage growth for most workers — even as corporate stock market valuations and profitability rise. Economic analysis often ascribes these trends to some combination of globalization, technological change and rising monopoly power. But our research suggests that a more compelling explanation is the broad...

CDC chief Redfield: 24 million may have coronavirus https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/cdc-chief-redfield-24-million-may-have-coronavirus/ WASHINGTON—The head of the federal  Centers for Disease Control  now estimates that 24 million people in the U.S., ten times the actual numbers recorded, may be ill from the coronavirus. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield provided that estimate in a June 25 conference call with other reporters, the same day his agency expanded the list of pre-existing conditions that make people more vulnerable to the virus. The CDC also removed age by itself today as a risk factor for infection because of the surge of positive cases among young people. "Our best estimate right now is that for every case that's reported, there actually are ten other infections," Redfield told the health reporters. As of 9:30 am on June 26, the most-authoritative data on the coronavirus pandemic, from Johns Hopkins University, showed 2,422,312 million people have been s...

The fascists care not at all. Its Beyond "partisanship". America Didn't Give Up on Covid-19. Republicans Did. Paul Krugman https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-republicans.html Earlier this year much of America went through hell as the nation struggled to deal with Covid-19. More than 120,000 Americans have now died; more than 20 million have lost their jobs. But it's looking as if all those sacrifices were in vain. We never really got the coronavirus under control, and now infections, while they have fallen to a quite low level in the New York area, the pandemic's original epicenter, are surging in much of the rest of the country. And the bad news isn't just a result of more testing. In new hot spots like Arizona — where testing capacity is being overwhelmed — and Houston the fraction of tests coming up positive is soaring, which shows that the disease is spreading rapidly. It didn't have to be this way. The European Union, a hugely dive...

Interesting take on reparations. How a Black Commons Could Help Build Communal Wealth https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2020/06/26/black-wealth-land-ownership Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a  fundamental inequity  in wealth, land, and power that has circumscribed Black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S. The " 40 acres and a mule " promised to formerly enslaved Africans never came to pass. There was no redistribution of land, no reparations for the wealth extracted from stolen land by stolen labor. June 19 is celebrated by Black Americans as  Juneteenth , marking the date in 1865 that former slaves were informed of their freedom, albeit two years after the  Emancipation Proclamation . Coming this year at a time of protest over the continued police killing of Black people, it provides an opportunity to look back at how Black Americans were deprived of land ownership and the economic power that it brings. An expanded ...

Outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean: An Intensifying Pandemic https://blogs.imf.org/2020/06/26/outlook-for-latin-america-and-the-caribbean-an-intensifying-pandemic/ By  Alejandro Werner Español Latin America and the Caribbean have become the new COVID-19 global epicenter. The human cost has been tragic, with over 100,000 lives lost. The economic toll has also been steep.  The  World Economic Outlook Update  now estimates the region to shrink by 9.4 percent in 2020, four percentage points worse than the April projection and the worst recession on record. A mild recovery to +3.7 percent is projected in 2021. Latin American countries should be cautious in reopening their economies and allow science and data to guide the process. The pandemic The rates of COVID-19 infections and deaths per capita are approaching those in Europe and the United States, with the total number of cases accounting for about 25 percent of the worldwide total.   Against this backdrop, countries should be v...