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Washington’s Attempts To Bully China Will Only Backfire

January 16, 2025 Mike Whitney, The Unz Review. , , , ,
China is rapidly overtaking the United States in a number of areas that threaten to undermine America’s position in the world. Naturally, US leaders and their billionaire backers are concerned about this and have taken steps to remedy the situation. Regrettably, none of these steps include an honest appraisal of the western economic model that allows the ‘privileged few’ to skim-off too much of their company’s profits leaving insufficient capital to reinvest in productive activity, critical infrastructure or societal improvement. Chinese policymakers have taken a different approach to this issue and the results speak for themselves.

Trump’s Christmas Message Is One Of Chaos, Turbulence And Retaliation

December 26, 2024 Colonel (Ret) Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. , , , , , , ,
Letting no holiday opportunity go without stirring up chaos, turbulence and retaliation, by mid-morning on Christmas Day, President-elect Trump posted a series of insensitive, brazen and mean spirited “Merry Christmas” messages on his Truth Social platform. These posts for both national and international issues were followed, predictably, by over two dozen re-posts of articles or other social media posts forecasting his political agenda on topics including troubled Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth and his designation of Greenland and the Panama Canal as U.S. national security necessities, tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and reinstatement of the federal death penalty that Biden had suspended.

US Food Insecurity Rate Rose To 13.5% In 2023

September 10, 2024 Michael Long and Lara Gonçalves, Counter Punch. , , ,
The official U.S. food insecurity rate rose to 13.5% in 2023 from 12.8% in 2022, according to data the U.S. Department of Agriculture released on Sept. 4, 2024. That means more than 1 in 8 Americans – about 47 million people – couldn’t get enough food for themselves or their families at least some of the time. This is a significant increase from a recent low of 10.2% in 2021. Food insecurity grew in the two years that followed due to a sharp decline in government benefits, including money for groceries from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the program that pays for students to get lunch and breakfast for free at school.

Report Lauds Effects Of Guaranteed Income For Struggling Families

February 6, 2024 Chris Walker, Truthout. , , , ,
A guaranteed income program in Boston, Massachusetts, which began in the summer of 2021, resulted in numerous positive outcomes for recipients, highlights a recently published study by the groups that organized the program. Camp Harbor View and UpTogether, the organizations that dispersed the payments, privately funded the program from a group of 107 donors. Around $750,000 was raised in total, which was given out to 50 families around the Boston area. The families who were chosen to receive funds didn’t already qualify for social safety net benefits, as the program was designed to help those who were “too rich to be poor and too poor to be rich.”

Imagine A Central Income Distribution Institution

November 23, 2023 Matt Bruenig, People's Policy Project. , , ,
Many years ago, I learned that the Faroe Islands has a peculiar process for compensating workers. There, employers pay each worker’s entire paycheck to the tax authority, which removes any taxes owed and then remits the remainder to each worker’s linked bank account. As part of this process, the tax authority also rolls in any welfare payments an individual is owed when making its periodic payments. Beyond these practical advantages, the idea of a central income distribution institution (CIDI) — i.e. a government entity that all income payments are routed through, even factor income payments like wages, dividends, and interest — is useful for thinking through certain intractable philosophical, accounting, and conceptual debates that frequently pop up in the economic policy discourse.

‘Work Requirements’ Or Real Jobs?

July 10, 2023 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. , , ,
When I heard the debt-ceiling deal would target people in their fifties for new work requirements to get food stamps, I thought about my brother. As a young man in the Navy, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes—that’s the one where your body attacks your pancreas, and you need insulin to stay alive. At the time, treatment options were limited, and the Navy discharged him. But thanks to the V.A. and medical advances, he was OK. He’s a talented mechanic, had steady work, and raised two wonderful kids. In his fifties, though, the toll of the disease meant a lot of sick days. Too many for his employers.

Did The Debt Ceiling Deal Really Save The US From Bankruptcy?

June 20, 2023 Radhika Desai and Michael Roberts, Geopolitical Economy. , , , ,
So as far as the debt ceiling is concerned, there has been a pattern which has become a classic of sorts, with just days to go before the day that the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the US would run out of cash to meet its obligations, President Biden and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy reached a bipartisan deal which is going to permit the government to keep borrowing in return for certain cuts in spending, social spending in particular, that the Republicans insisted on. The catastrophic disaster predicted by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in the weeks leading up to the negotiations and the deadline was again narrowly averted.

England To Trial A Basic Income For The First Time

June 11, 2023 Curtis Daly, The Canary. , , ,
England is about to pilot a basic income scheme for the first time. Thirty people will receive £1600 a month for two years. The trial, which will take place in central Jarrow and East Finchley, seeks to find out what effects this will have on the lives of the participants. Will Stronge, director of research from thinktank Autonomy, said: All the evidence shows that it would directly alleviate poverty and boost millions of people’s wellbeing: the potential benefits are just too large to ignore. Indeed, this seems like an interesting and positive scheme to tackle the hardship millions of people face in this country. However, unsurprisingly, debates within the corporate media have included baseless criticism and personal attacks.

Debt Ceiling Agreement Improved, But Harmful Provisions Remain

May 29, 2023 Sharon Parrott, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. , , ,
While the debt ceiling agreement announced last night is a significant improvement over the radical House bill, it is not the deal the country deserves. There are a number of troubling elements, including the provision that will put at risk food assistance for very low-income older adults. This policy will increase hunger and poverty among that group, runs contrary to our nation’s values, and should be rejected. The nation must pay its bills — but that shouldn’t mean enacting legislation that leaves people who already struggle to afford the basics worse off. We should never have been in this situation. We are here only because House Republicans twisted the rules of democracy.

More Older Workers Are Trapped In Crummy Jobs, Unable To Retire

April 30, 2023 Teresa Ghilarducci and Christopher D. Cook, Economic Policy Institute. , , ,
Over the past two decades, older workers have become an increasingly significant share of the labor force. In the economic recovery after the Great Recession of 2008–2009, four in 10 Americans ages 55 or older were in the labor force—the highest participation rate in half a century. As of 2020, these older workers made up 23.6% of the total U.S. workforce, the highest portion on record. Why are so many older Americans unable to retire and so many working into old age to survive? For many, the answer isn’t “because they want to.” Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 50% of low-income older households ages 55–64 were financially fragile—up dramatically from the 35% at risk in 1992.

To Fight Inequality, Tax The Patriarchy And Invest In Care

April 18, 2023 Rebekah Entralgo, Inequality.org. , , ,
While millions of households across the United States are scrambling to file — or extend — their taxes by the April 19th deadline, members of our billionaire class are doing a great deal more smiling than scrambling. Why? Because the U.S. tax code is built to reward wealth over work and serves big corporate interests over working families. Trillions of dollars goes untaxed each year, deftly squirreled away by tax professionals hired by the nation’s wealthy and powerful or left untouched because the federal government doesn’t tax wealth as it does income. Over one recent five-year period, a bombshell ProPublica investigation from 2022 revealed, the 25 richest Americans paid a true tax rate of roughly 3.4 percent.

Federal Budget: Moral Or Immoral?

April 11, 2023 Pat Hynes, Greenfield Recorder. , , ,
April, the month tax filings are due, prompts us to ponder what our income taxes pay for. Are they used to provide all citizens sufficient resources and public goods for human security and well-being — the core of our national security? How much of our taxes pay for radically reducing climate change emissions and protection of nature; for equal quality education for all; for providing health care for all; for housing the poor and homeless and eliminating hunger; for safe bridges, roads and rail and adequate public transportation; for prioritizing diplomacy and peace in the world so as to avert war and reverse our decline of democracy? Aren’t these our deepest security guarantees?

The Government Bailed Out The Banks; How About A People’s Bailout?

March 16, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , ,
The March 10 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank sent shockwaves throughout the world economy. Since then, the US government moved quickly and decisively to bailout the bank’s depositors to the tune of USD 151 billion. The collapse of SVB, a bank utilized heavily by the tech industry and venture capitalists, is the second largest bank failure in US history. Signature Bank, based out of New York, also failed quickly afterwards as SVB’s crash triggered distrust in the banking system across the nation. The US government also bailed out Signature, spending USD 70 billion to ensure that the bank’s depositors had access to all of their money.

Poverty Is A Public Policy Choice

September 23, 2022 Asha Banerjee and Ben Zipperer, In These Times. , , ,
It should not have taken a pandemic to realize poverty is a public policy choice. Public investments in safety net programs continue to be extremely effective poverty reduction tools, as newly released Census income data show. Government social programs kept tens of millions of people out of poverty in 2021. Because of expansions to programs like unemployment insurance benefits and the child tax credit, poverty rates were actually lower in 2021 than they were prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. The poverty reduction achieved through expanded social insurance programs highlights how much policymakers’ choices can impact poverty.

Reflections On The Sri Lankan Economic Crisis

May 24, 2022 Prabhat Patnaik, Global South Colloquy. , , ,
So much has been written on the Sri Lankan economic crisis that the facts are by now quite well-known (see for instance C P Chandrasekhar, Frontline April 22): the massive build-up of external debt; the huge Value Added Tax concessions that pushed up the fiscal deficit and made the government borrow abroad even to spend domestically; the decline in foreign exchange earnings because of the pandemic that particularly hit tourist inflows; the downward pressure on the exchange rate which made many Sri Lankan workers choose the unofficial route to send their earnings home rather than the official route; the precipitous decline in foreign exchange reserves; the directive of the government to cut down on the use of chemical fertilizers to save foreign exchange that actually hit foodgrain output; and so on.
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