Economics

Previously Withheld UCLA Video Shows Heckling Of Mnuchin

March 16, 2018 Amanda Lee Myers, AP.org Resist! Economics, Secrecy, Treasury, Trump Administration

A previously withheld video has been released showing the near-constant heckling of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin during a moderated talk about the economy at UCLA. The university initially balked at releasing the video, saying that Mnuchin "subsequently withdrew" his agreement for it to be posted online. The video shows audience members hissing at Mnuchin throughout the Feb. 26 event in Los Angeles. The hissing was so loud the secretary barely spoke a sentence without commenting about it. Seven minutes into Mnuchin's opening remarks, three different women shouted at him and were either carried or escorted out of the room by police after they ignored warnings to stop. They yelled that the U.S. is bullying North Korea and criticized President Trump's tax legislation.

The Complex Political Realities In Venezuela

March 1, 2018 By Lucas Koerner, Venezuelanalysis.com Educate! Economics, Politics, Venezuela

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans could be seen marching down Caracas’ principal Urdaneta Avenue under the sweltering Caribbean sun. No, this was not a protest against the government, which we are routinely told is a dictatorship inflicting mass starvation on its people, but on the contrary, a public rally backing President Nicolas Maduro’s reelection campaign. The occasion was February 4th, which this year marked the 26th anniversary of Hugo Chavez’s revolutionary 1992 uprising against Venezuela’s oligarchic two-party system, known as the Fourth Republic. However, ahead of upcoming April 22 presidential elections that may well determine the fate of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution, this 4F – as it is commonly known – was much more an explicit show of support for the current leftist president.

Gun Lobby Meets Match With Economic Protests

February 26, 2018 Rob Cox, Reuters.com Resist! Economics, Gun Control, Lobbying, Protests

NEW YORK (Reuters Breakingviews) - The day before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, he delivered a speech widely remembered for its closing passage, when the reverend said he was unafraid to die because he had “been to the mountaintop.” Few seem to recall an earlier part of his oration where King exhorted African-Americans to use their purchasing power, and specifically boycott Coca-Cola, Wonder Bread and Sealtest milk. Many successful civil-rights movements have adopted some type of economic protest. Consider Gandhi’s 24-day march from an ashram near Ahmedabad to the coastal town of Dandi to harvest sea salt in an act of nonviolent resistance against the salt monopoly imposed by India’s British colonizers.

The Free Market Made Us Do It!

January 8, 2018 By Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org Educate! Capitalism, Economics, Market, New Economy

Apologists for the many millions in compensation that America’s largest corporations regularly dole out to their top executives have essentially one basic, all-purpose go-to defense. America’s corporate giants, this defense contends, are just paying the going “market rate” for top-notch executive talent. So chill out, America. Average Americans who complain about excessive executive pay, says Stanford Business School’s Nick Donatiello, simply do not realize “how much compensation is required, given the market for talent, to attract and motivate the right people.” Any company that tries to go cheap and get by without that “right talent,” America’s corporate wisdom continues, would never be able to successfully compete in our globalized marketplace. Does this defense hold any water? Not any more.

Bitcoin, Blockchain, And Local Currencies

December 19, 2017 By Tad Montgomery, Resilience.org Educate! Currency, Digital, Economics, Local Currency

The world is on fire lately with the exponential growth of Bitcoin and other electronic cryptocurrencies. While some see these as speculative bubbles that are tied to nothing, used on the dark web to ransom hacked computers, and profligate users of electricity, others see Bitcoin and its ilk as our liberation from nation states and their central banks. Both could be true. Perhaps more important is that the platform underpinning Bitcoin, called blockchain technology, and later advances such as Ethereum, have the potential to completely transform the way that the world operates. Many people see the rise in Bitcoin as the result of a growing distrust in governments, official/artificial fiat currencies, corporations, institutions, and other people.

Our Opportunity To Build Wealth, Economy, And Culture

December 16, 2017 Melissa Hoover, institute.coop Create! Economics, Small Business, Wealth

Entrepreneurship can be a powerful force for prosperity. Business ownership gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to earn more money and create jobs. But this pathway to self-made success is mostly an option for the wealthy and for white households with access to capital and connections. Latino or African American households are historically less likely to start a business than white households, contributing to a persistent racial wealth gap. The business asset gap has notable impacts for women—in fact, women of all ethnic backgrounds and races: women business owners have household incomes 56 percent higher than other women working full-time. Making it easier for all people to become business owners will increase the wealth opportunities in our neighborhoods, cities, and the national economy.

With The GOP Tax Plan, A New Economic Epoch Begins

December 5, 2017 Sam Pizzigati, inequality.org Educate! Economics, New Economy, Tax Reform, Taxes

By Sam Pizzigati for Inequality - The U.S. Senate has now passed the most significant tax “reform” legislation since 1986. The legislation, most pundits believe, will likely become the new law of the land within weeks. What will that mean? We already have all sorts of numbers from reputable researchers on who will now see really big savings on their tax returns (the rich) and who won’t (everybody else). We also have official — and sobering — congressional research estimates on what the GOP tax changes, once put in place, will mean for the nation’s economic growth and the federal budget deficit. But we don’t yet have what we need: a sense of the “big picture.” Ten years down the road, twenty years down the road, how will the lives that Americans lead change if this Republican tax plan gets to shape our national future? The answer may well rest in new research just out from three of the world’s most prolific inequality analysts, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. Piketty and Saez have been pushing the envelope on income distribution stats ever since the 21st century began. The duo, joined in recent years by Zucman, have become ever more sophisticated in crunching the numbers that tell us who gets what and why in America.

Trickledown Economics—Then And Now

December 5, 2017 Staff, anticap.wordpress.com Educate! Economics, History, Inequality, New Economy

By Staff of Occasional Links and Bits Of Commentary - In 1929, the share of income captured by the top .01 percent (the über-rich, whose income share is indicated in the blue line in the chart above) reached 4 percent, and their share of wealth (the red line) even higher: 10 percent. Much the same kind of inequality existed in 2008, when the top .01 percent shares of income and wealth were 4.1 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively—on the eve of the Second Great Depression. The only real difference is, while the top .01 percent shares of income and wealth fell during the depression of the 1930s (and continued to fall during the postwar period), they’ve been rising since 2008. In 2014 (the last year for which data are available), the top .01 percent share of income had increased to 4.4 percent and their share of wealth to 9.7 percent. And now Coolidge’s Republican descendants are attempting to ram through a set of tax cuts that will allow those in the top .01 percent to keep more of their extraordinary income and to accumulate even more wealth. All the while claiming that the benefits will trickle down to the rest of us. In his position as a historian of the first Great Depression, who has also lived through the Second Great Depression, McElvaine certainly understands what’s going on...

Current Conflict In Spain Has To Do With Economic Failure

November 7, 2017 Mark Weisbrot, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Economics, Nationalism, Spain

By Mark Weisbrot for Counterpunch - As Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy threatens to take over the autonomous region of Catalonia, it is becoming clearer even to casual observers who the bad guys are in this conflict. Generally, when one side is peaceful and seeks dialogue, and the other is committed to resolving the disagreement through force, repression, and violence — well, you get the picture. The Spanish government’s argument that the October 1 referendum on independence was unconstitutional is not so determinative as they would like us to believe. As Vicente Navarro, who has written for many years on Spain’s incomplete transition to democracy, notes: the 1978 constitution was much more a product of the 36-year dictatorship than it was of the democracy that was struggling to be born. And Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) in particular has deep roots in political forces and people who were part of the Franco dictatorship. The anti-democratic character and fascist heritage of the PP government became glaringly evident when Rajoy sent thousands of troops into Catalonia in a failed attempt to stop people from voting. This was not, as he claimed, to enforce the law: the Spanish government could simply have allowed the vote and refused to recognize the result. Rather it was to crush the independence movement and the expression of their ideas by force

The Third Track: Trade That Builds Our Economy Anew

October 24, 2017 Staff, www.iatp.org Create! Economics, NAFTA, TPP, Trade

By Staff of IATP - President Trump is playing high stakes poker in the NAFTA talks, with his US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, at the helm. Laura Dawson, director of the Wilson Centre’s Canada Centre published an op-ed on 11 October in which she suggests there are two tracks to the NAFTA talks – one is moving ahead with the “easy consensus” (i.e. tracking new issues that gained prominence in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations), while the other, driven by Trump’s tweets and America First Agenda, is putting the whole enterprise at risk with incendiary statements and impossible demands. The agenda moving ahead for NAFTA reform seeks regulatory harmonization (to the lowest standard), longer monopolies on technology through tighter patent controls, and an extension of foreign investor rights over domestic legislation. It is an agenda much of the U.S. business community is squarely behind, and Canada’s and Mexico’s business communities, too. That agenda was moving along, its path likely smoothed by the fact that many of the negotiators knew one another from the TPP talks. NAFTA empowers an economics many civil society organizations have resisted for decades, whether trade unions, farm organizations, environmentalists, women’s organizations or church groups.

Greece: Alternative Economies & Community Currencies Pt. 1

October 23, 2017 Niko Georgiades, www.unicornriot.ninja Create! Cooperatives, Economics, Greece

By Niko Georgiades for Unicorn Riot - Athens, Greece – While capitalism and consumerism dominate the culture of the United States of America and the Western world, community currencies are creating a buzz elsewhere. The radical need for alternative economies and community currencies is becoming more commonplace among societies across the globalized world dealing with the crisis of mass poverty and inequality. In part one of our three part series shining a light on some of these alternatives, we look at the Athens Integral Cooperative. In the summer of 2017, the self-organized squat of Embros Theater hosted a speaking engagement discussing community currencies and alternative economies. After the discussion, we interviewed Theodore from the Athens Integral Cooperative (AIC) inside a social center in Exarcheia (Athens, Greece) about the parallel economy they are creating. Theodore gave a run down of what AIC is, the importance of it, as well as its struggles and how it modeled itself after Catalan Integral Cooperative (see our special on the Catalan Integral Cooperative). “We are building a substantial, alternative, and autonomous economy.”

Even A Modest Basic Income Could Improve Economic Security

October 20, 2017 James King, www.peoplespolicyproject.org Create! Economics, Guaranteed basic income

By James King for Peoples Policy Project - The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) – a cash payment made to every person in the country with no strings attached – is becoming increasingly popular in experimental policy circles. Most proposals for a universal basic income are “complete” UBI proposals: payments large enough to guarantee a minimum standard of living to every person independent of work. In the US, that would be roughly $12,000 per person based on the poverty line. However, it is more likely that any universal cash payment passed in the US would be more modest to begin with, e.g. a low UBI of a few hundred dollars a month. As UBI advocates continue to advance their policy objectives, it is imperative to make the case that any UBI, even a small one, has significant benefits. In 2016, the Federal Reserve reported that nearly half of all Americans would not be able to cover a $400 emergency expense without either borrowing money or selling valuables. Although the financial status of Americans has been improving since the Great Recession, the majority of Americans earning less than $30,000 a year still worry about paying their bills every month and maintaining their standard of living. Money may not buy happiness, but even a partial UBI could help buy Americans peace of mind and provide many Americans an avenue to save money for emergencies. Opponents of a UBI might claim that such a low UBI would just get absorbed into each family’s normal consumption level and thus not improve their overall financial security.

From Cooperation Jackson On Intersection Of Gender And Economics

October 19, 2017 Staff, www.atlantablackstar.com Create! Cooperation, Economics, Gender, New Economy

By Staff of Atlanta Black Star - My mom has told me a story several times of when my dad bartered a painting for bread. He had done a small oil painting of a loaf of bread with a wine bottle based on a local bakery. One day they were hungry and had no money, so he went to the bakery and in exchange for the painting the baker gave him the same daily baked long loaf of bread featured in my dad’s painting. At that time they lived on about $800 a month with only a VA pension and an SSI check. In New York City during the ’80s we used subway tokens in place of dollars at bodegas — a corner store — and with street vendors. My best friend and I stretched our resources on Saturdays by going through together with one token each way on the subway, and then we’d have two tokens to use for lunch. So, we could share a hot dog and a knish from a hot dog vendor. Another example that connects me to the work I’m doing now is the apartment building I grew up in on East 9th Street. My mother gave birth to me and my father delivered me in our apartment in 1978 with everyone from the building there pitching in. Our building went through a long coop conversion process. It was resident self-managed through the ’80s and then formally became a low-income co-op in the early 1990s. I did not know that I lived in a “shared-equity cooperative” until two years ago at a Community Land Trust conference I went to for Cooperation Jackson.

Clarifying Gandhi: POTUS, Rutherford, And Gandhi On Moral Economics

September 6, 2017 P.K. Wiilley, www.transcend.org Educate! Economics, Gandhi, History, New Economy

By P.K. Wiilley for TRANSCEND Media Service - 30 Aug 2017 – The question of what constitutes a wonderful and advanced civilization is dependent upon Justice, which is buttressed by economics. All great philosopher-doers, concerned with the betterment of human life have recognized that the handling of the economic means for living life must be guided by ethics and morality for the good of all. Gandhi was no exception. He undertook a task, the sheer enormity of which remains unsurpassed to date: to create a free, truly democratic, independent, unified India, out of dozens of princely states, out of rigid, feudal-social-mindset-stratifications, after nearly 400 years of brainwashing colonialism. His awesome effort assisted by a less bridled media, gave his voice world-wide amplification. Gandhi was able to clearly define unifying ideals, to demonstrate ethical means for our awareness to express itself towards and for each another. In the realm of economics, as with all the ideals he evolved to, Gandhi saw Justice clearly, with moral economics as the means to ensure Justice. To ensure that all could eat, have education, homes, clothes, decent and meaningful employment, the basics for a good life, was and is, human justice and basic decency to one another.

The Activists Who Helped Shut Down Trump’s CEO Councils

August 21, 2017 Sarah Anderson, www.inequality.org Resist! CEO, Corporations, Economics, Trump Administration

By Sarah Anderson for Inequality - The CEOs who made up two White House advisory councils have fled like rats on a sinking ship. Their exodus — a dramatic rebuke of Donald Trump — came within 48 hours of the incendiary August 15 press conference where the President praised some of the participants of last week’s white supremacist rampage in Charlottesville, Virginia. But many of the CEOs on these councils had been under heavy pressure to disavow Trump’s agenda of hate and racism even before Charlottesville. That pressure came from grassroots activists. The Center for Popular Democracy, Make The Road New York, New York Communities for Change, and several other immigrant and worker advocates had led that activist campaign, targeting the leaders of nine major corporations affiliated with the Trump administration. The campaign, working through a web site called Corporate Backers of Hate, detailed the connections between the nine companies and the Trump administration and encouraged people to send emails to both the CEOs involved and members of their corporate boards. Throughout the spring and summer, the campaign also held protests against the companies, including a civil disobedience action at the JPMorgan Chase headquarters on May Day...

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