Public School Teacher Strikes Show Workplace Organizing Pays Off [feedly]

Public School Teacher Strikes Show Workplace Organizing Pays Off
https://economicfront.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/public-school-teacher-strikes-show-workplace-organizing-pays-off/

While those at the top of the income pyramid continue to celebrate economic trends, the great majority of working people continue to struggle to make ends meet.  However, teacher victories in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona demonstrate that broad-based sustained workplace organizing, labor-community solidarity, and importantly a willingness to strike, can change the balance of power in favor of working people and produce meaningful gains.

Teacher Strikes

West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona are all considered red states, with legislatures that have aggressively reduced taxes on the wealthy and corporations, slashed spending on social programs, and gutted union rights for public sector workers by denying them the right to collectively bargain or strike.  Yet, after months of careful workplace and community organizing, West Virginia teachers launched a nine-day strike in February that shut down the entire state's public school system and won them and all other state workers a 5 percent salary increase and a government promise to convene a task force to find ways to reign in worker health care costs.

Oklahoma teachers followed with their own workplace and community actions and a nine-day statewide strike in early April. The day before the start of the strike the legislature hurriedly approved salary increases of $6000 for teachers and $1250 for support staff, and days later a modest $40 million increase in the education budget.  This wasn't enough to convince the teachers to call off their strike; they had demanded a raise of $10,000 for teachers and $5,000 for support staff, $200 million for increased school funding, $213 million for state employee raises, and a $255.9 million increase in health care funding.  However, after the head of the state's largest teacher's union called for an end to the walkout, saying that it had achieved all it could, teachers, many reluctantly, agreed to return to work without further gains.

Arizona teachers have participated in workplace actions and demonstrations to press their demand for salary increases for themselves and other education workers and a significant boost to the education budget.  The governor, hoping to avoid a threatened strike, announced a plan to give teachers a 20 percent raise by 2020, including a nine percent raise this year.  The teachers weren't satisfied: they didn't find the governor's plan to raise their wages financially realistic, they wanted raises for all school workers, and they wanted school funding returned to its 2008 level.  In a statewide vote of teachers and other school personal, approximately 80 percent voted to walk out on April 26 if their demands were not met.  This would be Arizona's first statewide walkout.

While the gains won in these states are not sufficient to reverse decades of concerted action by state legislatures to undermine public services and public workers, they are impressive nonetheless and should encourage a renewed focus on and support for workplace organizing and collective action.

Organizing To Win

These victories did not come easily.  Teachers were willing to take the bold step of engaging in a technically illegal strike for at least two main reasons.  The first is that they have endured terrible working conditions for years, conditions which also weighed heavily on those they teach.  For example, per student instructional funding in Oklahoma was some 30 percent below its 2008 level.  Some 20 percent of the state's school districts were forced by financial pressures to adopt four-day school weeks.  Textbooks remain in short supply and out of date. Classes are so overcrowded that many students must sit on the floor.  And the state's public school teachers and staff had not received a raise in ten years; pay was so low that many have been forced to work multiple jobs.

And adding insult to injury is the fact that state legislatures in all three states have slashed spending on education and teacher salaries in order to finance massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.  A case in point: The Arizona legislature has cut approximately $1 billion from schools since the 2008 recession while simultaneously reducing taxes.  No doubt the fact that such regressive policies were often supported by both Democratic as well as Republican lawmakers, as in Oklahoma, also encouraged teachers to embrace direct-workplace action rather than more traditional lobbying to force needed legislative changes.

The second reason is that strike votes were proceeded by months of organizing that informed and created bonds of solidarity.  West Virginia was a model. Forums were held in most schools which educated and also encouraged local leadership development, teachers joined by other school workers engaged in ever more militant school-based actions, and eventually strike votes were held in every school with the participation of all teachers and staff regardless of union affiliation.  Teacher activists, most of whom were rank and file union activists, used a variety of methods, including social media, to build a strong state-wide network to coordinate their work.  The strike was called only when it was clear that it had the support of the overwhelming majority of teachers, support staff, and school bus drivers.

This strong rank and file base was key to the strike's success.  After five days, the Governor and teacher union leaders announced that a deal had been reached and called for an end to the strike.  However, the rank and file refused.  They held their strike until the state legislature actually approved an agreement that met their demands.

The Oklahoma strike was less successful in part because a weaker union movement meant fewer trained labor activists.  This made it harder to engage in school-by-school organizing and forge a strong state network. As a consequence the strike was launched without the same level of workplace organization and connection to other education workers such as support staff and bus drivers.  And as a result, it made it much harder for rank and file teacher activists to effectively oppose the teacher union leadership's call to settle for what was won and to return to work.  It is likely that Oklahoma law, which requires that 75 percent of the legislature vote in favor of any revenue hike, also contributed to teacher willingness to end the strike.

Arizona teachers are now preparing to strike.  Teachers in Kentucky and Colorado recently engaged in one day walkouts, shutting down schools and demonstrating at their respective state capitals to protest low wages and inadequate education budgets.  Discussions continue in both states about the possibility of renewed strikes to win their demands.  We should be studying as well as supporting all their efforts.

Reasons to Celebrate

These teacher strikes are important and have deservedly won widespread community support.  They have raised the salaries of teachers and other education workers, thereby helping their schools attract and retain talented people.  They have also boosted state education budgets, which benefits the broader community, especially students and their parents.  They also shine a spotlight on the destructive consequences of past tax giveaways to the rich and powerful and the need for new progressive sources of tax revenue.  Finally, they show that workers can effect change, improving their own living and working conditions, even under extremely hostile conditions, through sustained workplace organization and audacity.

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krugman: We Don’t Need No Education [feedly]

We Don't Need No Education
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/23/opinion/teachers-protest-education-funding.html

Matt Bevin, the conservative Republican governor of Kentucky, lost it a few days ago. Thousands of his state's teachers had walked off their jobs, forcing many schools to close for a day, to protest his opposition to increased education funding. And Bevin lashed out with a bizarre accusation: "I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them."

He later apologized. But his hysterical outburst had deep roots: At the state and local levels, the conservative obsession with tax cuts has forced the G.O.P. into what amounts to a war on education, and in particular a war on schoolteachers. That war is the reason we've been seeing teacher strikes in multiple states. And people like Bevin are having a hard time coming to grips with the reality they've created.

To understand how they got to this point, you need to know what government in America does with your tax dollars.

The federal government, as an old line puts it, is basically an insurance company with an army: nondefense spending is dominated by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. State and local governments, however, are basically school districts with police departments. Education accounts for more than half the state and local work force; protective services like police and fire departments account for much of the rest. 

So what happens when hard-line conservatives take over a state, as they did in much of the country after the 2010 Tea Party wave? They almost invariably push through big tax cuts. Usually these tax cuts are sold with the promise that lower taxes will provide a huge boost to the state economy.

This promise is, however, never — and I mean never — fulfilled; the right's continuing belief in the magical payoff from tax cuts represents the triumph of ideology over overwhelming negative evidence.

What tax cuts do, instead, is sharply reduce revenue, wreaking havoc with state finances. For a great majority of states are required by law to balance their budgets. This means that when tax receipts plunge, the conservatives running many states can't do what Trump and his allies in Congress are doing at the federal level — simply let the budget deficit balloon. Instead, they have to cut spending.

And given the centrality of education to state and local budgets, that puts schoolteachers in the cross hairs.

How, after all, can governments save money on education? They can reduce the number of teachers, but that means larger class sizes, which will outrage parents. They can and have cut programs for students with special needs, but cruelty aside, that can only save a bit of money at the margin. The same is true of cost-saving measures like neglecting school maintenance and scrimping on school supplies to the point that many teachers end up supplementing inadequate school budgets out of their own pockets. 

So what conservative state governments have mainly done is squeeze teachers themselves.

Now, teaching kids was never a way to get rich. However, being a schoolteacher used to put you solidly in the middle class, with a decent income and benefits. In much of the country, however, that is no longer true.

At the national level, earnings of public-school teachers have fallen behind inflation since the mid-1990s, and have fallen even more behind the earnings of comparable workers. At this point, teachers earn 23 percent less than other college graduates. But this national average is a bit deceptive: Teacher pay is actually up in some big states like New York and California, but it's way down in a number of right-leaning states.

Meanwhile, teachers' benefits are also getting worse. In particular, teachers are having to pay a rising share of their health insurance premiums, a severe burden when their real earnings are declining at the same time.

So we're left with a nation in which teachers, the people we count on to prepare our children for the future, are starting to feel like members of the working poor, unable to make ends meet unless they take second jobs. And they can't take it anymore.

Which brings us back to Bevin's unhinged outburst.

One way to think about what's currently happening in a number of states is that the anti-Obama backlash, combined with the growing tribalism of American politics, delivered a number of state governments into the hands of extreme right-wing ideologues. These ideologues really believed that they could usher in a low-tax, small-government, libertarian utopia.

Predictably, they couldn't. For a while they were able to evade some of the consequences of their failure by pushing the costs off onto public sector employees, especially schoolteachers. But that strategy has reached its limits. Now what?

Well, some Republicans have actually proved willing to learn from experience, reverse tax cuts and restore education funding. But all too many are responding the way Bevin did: Instead of admitting, even implicitly, that they were wrong, they're lashing out, in increasingly unhinged ways, at the victims of their policies.

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Could the US Win World War III without using Nuclear Weapons? [feedly]

Could the US Win World War III without using Nuclear Weapons?
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/24/04/2018/could-us-win-world-war-iii-without-using-nuclear-weapons

As the US, Russia and China test each other's patience and strategic focus, speculation about the chances of a world war has hit a new high. But many of the people seriously engaged in this weighty discussion often get it wrong.

When it comes to estimating military capability, the Western media is principally concerned with the weapons capabilities of weaker states – and it rarely pays much attention to the colossal capability of the US, which still accounts for most of the world's defence spending.

Any sensible discussion of what a hypothetical World War III might look like needs to begin with the sheer size and force of America's military assets. For all that China and Russia are arming up on various measures, US commanders have the power to dominate escalating crises and counter opposing forces before they can be used.

Take missile warfare alone. The US Navy already has 4,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and the Navy and Air Force are currently taking delivery of 5,000 JASSM conventional cruise missiles with ranges from 200-600 miles. Barely visible to radar, these are designed to destroy "hardened" targets such as nuclear missile silos. Russia and China, by contrast, have nothing of equivalent quantity or quality with which to threaten the US mainland.

The same holds true when it comes to maritime forces. While much is made of Russia's two frigates and smaller vessels stationed off the Syrian coast, France alone has 20 warships and an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean – and US standing forces in the area include six destroyers equipped with scores of cruise missiles and anti-missile systems. At the other end of Europe, the Russian military is threatening the small Baltic states, but it is rarely noted that the Russian Baltic fleet is the same size as Denmark's and half the size of Germany's.

Meanwhile, China's aggressively expansionist behaviour in the South China Sea is reported alongside stories of its first aircraft carrier and long-range ballistic missiles. But for all that the Chinese navy is large and growing, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, it's still only numerically equivalent to the combined fleets of Japan and Taiwan, while the US boasts 19 aircraft carriers worldwide if its marine assault ships are included.

But overhanging all this, of course, is the nuclear factor.

Out of the sky

The US, Russia and China are all nuclear-armed; Vladimir Putin recently unveiled a new fleet of nuclear-capable missiles which he described as "invincible in the face of all existing and future systems", and some have suggested that China may be moving away from its no-first-use policy. This is all undeniably disturbing. While it has long been assumed that the threat of nuclear weapons acts as a deterrent to any war between the major powers, it's also possible that the world may simply have been riding its luck. But once again, the US's non-nuclear capabilities are all too often overlooked.

US leaders may in fact believe they can remove Russia's nuclear deterrent with an overwhelming conventional attack backed up by missile defences. This ability was cultivated under the Prompt Global Strike programme, which was initiated before 9/11 and continued during the Obama years. Organised through the US Air Force's Global Strike Command, it is to use conventional weapons to attack anywhere on Earth in under 60 minutes.

This is not to say the task would be small. In order to destroy Russia's nuclear missiles before they can be launched, the US military would need to first blind Russian radar and command and communications to incoming attack, probably using both physical and cyber attacks. It would then have to destroy some 200 fixed and 200 mobile missiles on land, a dozen Russian missile submarines, and Russian bombers. It would then need to shoot down any missiles that could still be fired.

Russia is not well positioned to survive such an attack. Its early warning radars, both satellite and land-based, are decaying and will be hard to replace. At the same time, the US has and is developing a range of technologies to carry out anti-satellite and radar missions, and it has been using them for years. (All the way back in 1985, it shot down a satellite with an F15 jet fighter.) That said, the West is very dependent on satellites too, and Russia and China continue to develop their own anti-satellite systems.

The air war

Russia's bomber aircraft date back to the Soviet era, so despite the alarm they provoke when they nudge at Western countries' airspace, they pose no major threat in themselves. Were the Russian and US planes to face each other, the Russians would find themselves under attack from planes they couldn't see and that are any way out of their range.

US and British submarine crews claim a perfect record in constantly shadowing Soviet submarines as they left their bases throughout the Cold War. Since then, Russian forces have declined and US anti-submarine warfare has been revived, raising the prospect that Russian submarines could be taken out before they could even launch their missiles.

The core of the Russia's nuclear forces consists of land-based missiles, some fixed in silos, others mobile on rail and road. The silo-based missiles can now be targeted by several types of missiles, carried by US planes almost invisible to radar; all are designed to destroy targets protected by deep concrete and steel bunkers. But a problem for US war planners is that it might take hours too long for their missile-carrying planes to reach these targets – hence the need to act in minutes.

One apparently simple solution to attacking targets very quickly is to fit quick nuclear ballistic missiles with non-nuclear warheads. In 2010, Robert Gates, then serving as secretary of defence under Barack Obama, said that the US had this capability. Intercontinental ballistic missiles take just 30 minutes to fly between the continental US's Midwest and Siberia; if launched from well-positioned submarines, the Navy's Tridents can be even quicker, with a launch-to-target time of under ten minutes.

From 2001, the US Navy prepared to fit its Trident missiles with either inert solid warheads – accurate to within ten metres – or vast splinter/shrapnel weapons. Critics have argued that this would leave a potential enemy unable to tell whether they were under nuclear or conventional attack, meaning they would have to assume the worst. According to US Congressional researchers, the development work came close to completion, but apparently ceased in 2013.

Nonetheless, the US has continued to develop other technologies across its armed services to attack targets around the world in under an hour – foremost among them hypersonic missiles, which could return to Earth at up to ten times the speed of sound, with China and Russia trying to keep up.

Missile envy

The remainder of Russia's nuclear force consists of missiles transported by rail. An article on Kremlin-sponsored news outlet Sputnik described how these missile rail cars would be so hard to find that Prompt Global Strike might not be as effective as the US would like – but taken at face value, the article implies that the rest of the Russian nuclear arsenal is in fact relatively vulnerable.

Starting with the "Scud hunt" of the First Gulf War, the US military has spent years improving its proficiency at targeting mobile ground-based missiles. Those skills now use remote sensors to attack small ground targets at short notice in the myriad counter-insurgency operations it's pursued since 2001.

If the "sword" of Prompt Global Strike doesn't stop the launch of all Russian missiles, then the US could use the "shield" of its own missile defences. These it deployed after it walked out of a treaty with Russia banning such weapons in 2002.

While some of these post-2002 missile defence systems have been called ineffective, the US Navy has a more effective system called Aegis, which one former head of the Pentagon's missile defence programs claims can shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles. Some 300 Aegis anti-ballistic missiles now equip 40 US warships; in 2008, one destroyed a satellite as it fell out of orbit.

War mentality

In advance of the Iraq war, various governments and onlookers cautioned the US and UK about the potential for unforeseen consequences, but the two governments were driven by a mindset impervious to criticism and misgivings. And despite all the lessons that can be learned from the Iraq disaster, there's an ample risk today that a similarly gung-ho attitudecould take hold.

Foreign casualties generally have little impact on domestic US politics. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who died under first sanctions and then war did not negatively impact presidents Clinton or George W. Bush. Neither might the prospect of similar casualties in Iran or North Korea or other states, especially if "humanitarian" precision weapons are used.

But more than that, an opinion poll run by Stanford University's Scott Sagan found that the US public would not oppose the preemptive use of even nuclear weapons provided that the US itself was not affected. And nuclear Trident offers that temptation.

The control of major conventional weapons as well as WMD needs urgent attention from international civil society, media and political parties. There is still time to galvanise behind the Nobel-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the nuclear ban treaty, and to revive and globalise the decaying arms control agenda of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which played a vital part in bringing the Cold War to a largely peaceful end.

Like the Kaiser in 1914, perhaps Trump or one of his successors will express dismay when faced with the reality a major US offensive unleashes. But unlike the Kaiser, who saw his empire first defeated and then dismembered, perhaps a 21st-century US president might get away with it.

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Russia Sanctions Push Kazakhstan Closer to China [feedly]

Russia Sanctions Push Kazakhstan Closer to China
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/23/04/2018/russia-sanctions-push-kazakhstan-closer-china

Tristan Kenderdine examines the growing dependency of global industrial output on Chinese policy and the risks this holds for a global trade perspective.

Ahead of the Astana Economic Forum in May, Kazakhstan will be looking to showcase its integration with the global economy and tout its attractiveness for global investment. Yet the reality of Kazakhstan's international trade and investment policy will be dominated by the twin pins of China's geoeconomic strategy and its continuing symbiotic economic relationship with Russia. And for the United States, the introduction of short-term exchange rate volatility via renewed Russian sanctions pushes Kazakhstan further towards China rather than pulling it into the global economy. Poor policy integration from the US, means that its Russian sanction policy is having spillover effects on Kazakhstan, while China's state policy finance architecture is standing ready to offer decade-length strategic investment in industrials.

 

Kazakhstan was hit in April 2018 with exchange rate volatility in a proxy effect from the US targeted weakening of the Russian ruble. The ruble lost 10 percent in value against the US dollar in the week following the introduction of sanctions, and as a result the tenge weakened 3 percent over the same week and 1.8 percent in the two days 9-10 Aprilalone. This falling tenge prompted central government ministries and the National Bank of Kazakhstan to draft an emergency government response plan.

 

Central bank officials have been in fire-fighting mode. Daniyar Akishev, director of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, reminded the population that it was normal for a floating tenge to go through weakening and strengthening cycles, and advised the government not to take any defensive monetary policy decisions. Alpysbai Akhmetov, vice director of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, reaffirmed that the recent mini devaluation had simply been market deviation, and that the national bank would not engage in active foreign exchange interventions. While Timur Suleimenov, Minister of National Economy, said that Kazakhstan would consider short-term trade and investment policy options rather than interventionist monetary policy.

 

Kazakhstan introduced a free-floating exchange rate regime for the tenge in August 2015 after having to weaken the national currency by 19 percent in 2014 to align the US exchange rate to Kazakhstan's ruble peg. Soon after floating, the tenge lost a further 40 percent in a move that devastated many working people, as real estate is routinely negotiated in US dollars. Kazakhs are wary of a repeat of the devaluations, and it will be a hard sell to reassure the public that the latest exchange rate volatility tied to the ruble is market-driven rather than state-directed currency devaluation.

 

While Russia ruble sanctions hit the Kazakhstan tenge by proxy, China's industrial transfer policy finance offers a long-term stability to finance economic development. Kazakhstan has benefited from clearer policy transmission from China than many other economies on the Belt and Road geoindustrial policy. This latest threat to the tenge comes as Kazakh Invest released a list of 658 industrial investment projects for 2018-2020 to better align with China's investment in the Kazakh leg of the Belt and Road.

 

China's geoindustrial macrostrategy to transfer industrial capacity to external geographies in Central Asia is becoming increasingly clear. China's domestic factory closures under the Supply-side Reform policy is forcing Chinese State-owned Enterprises to relocate abroad. This is guided by with soft policy bank loans to help them ease into external geographies, are guided by government policy to match certain provinces with certain Central Asian states to push outward direct investment in targeted industries. China's industrial transfer financing policy for Kazakhstan centres on Hebei province in a financing system known as 'One Province, One Country'.

 

At an International Capacity Cooperation conference in Astana in August last year, China's Hebei sent provincial representatives of the Development and Reform Commission, Department of Commerce, and Department of Agriculture to meet with Kazakh officials and leaders of China's enterprises to discuss deepening International Capacity Cooperation. This followed a meeting in Beijing in May which saw Hebei province pledge to focus on four areas of exporting factory capacity in steel, cement, glass, and photovoltaic cells as well as equipment manufacturing.

 

The pattern of one Chinese province being paired with one sovereign state is normal for the unfolding industrial transfer policy. Not only is Hebei province paired with Kazakhstan, Jilin province is matched with Russia, Henan with Uzbekistan, Guangdong with Pakistan, and Shanxi to Indonesia. This administrative matchmaking is then paired with access to preferential policy funding and guided by international industrial associations by sector. For example Jilin to Russia in agriculture, rail transport, and finance; Shanxi to Indonesia in nickel smelting, energy equipment and transport equipment.

 

The Hebei-Kazakhstan pairing focuses on aluminium, glass, cement, logistics and warehousing, pharmaceuticals, and agroindustrial machinery. Hebei province, due to be merged with Beijing and Tianjin into the Jingjinji super-province, is the most concentrated steel production complex on the planet. As the centre of China's coal-steel industrial complex and its peripheral industries, Hebei is to be the hardest hit of any provincial governments by the central government's plans to curb excess factory capacity in traditional polluting industries. Enterprises and projects that have already begun transferring abroad include the Astana Industrial Park Phase II project, a joint venture between Xingtai Road and Bridge Construction Corporation and Astana City Investment and Development Bureau; USD 200 million to establish industrial parks in North Kazakhstan's Petropavlovsk; JA Solar Holdings photovoltaic energy generation; and China Glass Holding's move to take over a 600 ton a day floating glass production line. Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation Logistics has also established a cross-border e-commerce, warehousing and logistics deal with Hebei Good Hope Logistics Development.

 

Kazakhstan's national level economic planning is designed to utilise Chinese capital to leverage a 'third modernisation' into an open economic model. Policies such as the Kazakhstan 2050 Strategy, for long term post-hydrocarbon economic development, the USD9 billion Nurly Zhol (Bright Path) critical infrastructure investment plan to dock with China's Belt and Road transcontinental transport and logistics policy, and the Kazakhstan Industrial Innovation Development 2015-2019 short-term secondary industrial promotion strategy all exude an independent industrial strategy open to foreign investment. And the Russian Federation remains Kazakhstan's largest trading partner, with the countries tied together in the EEU customs union and sharing a high degree of economic complementarity. This means neither Moscow nor Astana have any need to fear Chinese industrial investment in Kazakhstan.

 

But Washington is now flirting with a geofinancial risk that it is unprepared to back. US destabilising the ruble risks pushing regional economies striving for greater integration with the global economy instead towards a ruble-yuan pact or a petro-yuan. And for recipient countries, China's closed capital account and unaudited state banking credit system means that investments in Kazakhstan carry with them an inherent financial risk tied to China's banking system. Suffering from a period of policy malaise, Washington is seeing decades of careful policy architecture in Central Asia being flattened with the broad, boorish strokes of sanctions and tariffs. Global trade calculus is more complicated than Washington can plan for, and in a battle of steel and aluminium, Kazakhstan will be happy to soak up China's excess capacity in both. The longer-term risk for the global trade perspective though is world-wide aggregate industrial output's growing dependency on Chinese policy bank capital.

 

For the United States, targeting the ruble hurts more than just Russia, and US foreign policy credibility in Central Asia is naturally taking a hit. For Kazakhstan, used to balancing geopolitical power, the rhetoric of global economic convergence may soon be muffled by the hard reality of rubles and yuan. Regardless of the Kazakhstan government's response to the short-term attack on the tenge, Kazakhstan's long-term investment strategy is banking on China.

 

 

 

Tristan Kenderdine is Research Director at Future Risk.

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Economic Update - Why People Struggle With The System - 04.22.18 [feedly]

Economic Update - Why People Struggle With The System - 04.22.18
http://economicupdate.podbean.com/e/economic-update-why-people-struggle-with-the-system-042218/

download (size: 107 MB )

 "Updates on teachers' strikes, capitalism abuses facebook, colleges reward privilege and reproduce it, Shell Oil knew about fossil fuels and global warming for last 50 years, UK housing size shrinks, Sinclair Broadcasting traps employees, US anti-depressant epidemic. Interview Rob Robinson: continuing discussion of water as human right vs for profit: how people fight and win."

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Links [feedly]

Links
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2018/04/links-1.html

• Winners and losers from rising American inequality - VoxEU
• A hostile environment - mainly macro
  
• Steel Tariffs and Wages (Painfully Wonkish) - Paul Krugman
• "What Money Can't Buy" with Sandel, Barro, and Summers - Matthew Kahn
• Marx and modern microeconomics - Samuel Bowles
• How the Loss of Union Power Has Hurt American Manufacturing - NYTimes
• Good bad theories - Stumbling and Mumbling
• The Great Snake Oil Slump - Paul Krugman
• Natural Resources, Living Standards and Inequality - Livio Di Matteo
• U.S. inequality: It's worse than we thought - FRB Minneapolis
• Facts vs hand-waving in economics - Stumbling and Mumbling

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